


After Silent Hill

by Luthor



Category: Silent Hill (2006)
Genre: AU, Anxiety, F/F, PTSD, Panic Attacks, no one's dead because i'm a wimp, panic disorders, silent hill movie, this is bound to turn into a bunch of tropes and feel good stuff so be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-02-22 04:58:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 22,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2495291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthor/pseuds/Luthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is silence, thick as fog, to which Rose poses her question.</p><p>She asks for too much, and the devil answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure what this is, but I've finally watched the movie (never played the game) and I'm in love with Cybil. So there's that. This is not exactly AU, but UA (universe alteration?). It sticks to the events in the movie, but the ending has been changed.
> 
> Also, idk where Rose lives, but for the sake of this fic I'm destroying a little bit of canon and placing her much closer to Brahams. If it's any consolation, I'm probably going to fail my degree because I can't make myself write for anything other than this dumb fic. :)

There is silence, thick as fog, to which Rose poses her question.

She asks for too much, and the devil answers.

 

# # # #

 

Rose doesn’t know what it means when she returns home to an empty house. The fog rolls in and back out again, and Sharon spends the night in the big bed with her, not sleeping. Neither of them sleeping.

When she hears the door opening at 3am, then, Rose is already out of the tangle of covers and poised with the baseball bat she’d stood by her nightstand, anticipating an intruder. She makes her way onto the landing, hears keys being thrown on a counter and footsteps in the hall.

“Stay in bed, sweetie, it’s alright,” she tells Sharon over her shoulder, and the girl burrows further beneath the blankets.

She comes to the top of the stairs, to the half-wall that allows her to see into the open plan of the lower floor. She sees nothing, at first. A coat over the sofa that wasn’t there before. Then she looks closer, realises whose coat it is, and tucks the bat against her chest as she comes around to the stairs.

Slowly, she descends, holds her breath. The carpet absorbs her footsteps like the fog had her presence, and for a moment Rose can’t quite believe that this can be real. She takes a deep breath in and holds it there, burns it inside her lungs, and feels no more alive than she had when she’d first stepped foot outside of Silent Hill.

Chris is the turning point – Chris who was not in Silent Hill, who did not die there, who is _here_ , in their kitchen, making coffee at 3am like he doesn’t expect he’ll sleep again. She drops her bat when she sees him, and Chris startles and drops his coffee mug, and the pair of them stand between the wreckage for a moment before Chris launches himself forward.

“You’re alive!” He takes her into his arms, squeezes uncomfortably, stuffs his nose in her hair and takes the stink of ash and blood and loss into his lungs. “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.”

Rose can hardly believe it herself.

When Chris thrusts her back at arm’s length, Rose almost falls over again – has to grip his elbows to keep herself upright.

“Sharon?” he asks her, and his entire face changes; elation to agony. “Sharon? Is she—?”

“Daddy!”

Rose is cast off again, deserted, and she stuffs her knuckles against her mouth to keep from crying as she watches father and daughter reunite. Sharon misses the last three steps in the stairs, jumps like all those times Rose has warned her not to, straight into Chris’ chest. He receives her tiny body into a hug and turns back to Rose, a look on his face that tells her he’s never going to let them go again, that they’re going to make it work, this time, that they can be happy now.

And they try.

God, she tries.

And for two years it’s almost working, almost worth it, and then the nightmares ease away, and the monsters beneath the bed abate, and Rose feels like she’s emerging from water only to see the world as it really is.

“Chris,” she tells him over their anniversary dinner, “I need a divorce.”

# # # #

 

It is late October and the world as Rose knows it is dying, like it does every year, and will every year for years to come.

Rose receives the change with open lungs and closed eyes – a moment of silence in the walk from her house to her parked car. She lives on the outskirts of the city, still, had thought of chasing a road South after Chris left, but hasn’t managed to bare it proper thought. Sharon sees her father, still, and Rose has roots at work, in the community, like she never had before.

Silent Hill lingers in the distance, that name on a map that Rose’s eyes track to subconsciously, and then skirt away from. She takes the road, sometimes. Pauses at the fork that veers off to chain-locked fences and traffic cones. The fog lures her in, a meter or two, and then she’ll stop.

She’ll stop and look out at the fog and wait to see someone – wait for something to come.

When it doesn’t, she starts her car and turns around again, and Silent Hill closes itself to her once more.

 

# # # #

 

In her dreams, Cybil Bennett is burning. Rose knows that her version of events cannot be what happened exactly; she did not witness Cybil’s death, only the evidence of it.

She wakes with the smell of burnt hair in her nose, showers in water so cold she comes out shivering into a towel.

Sharon asks about her, once, and Rose’s stomach twists itself into a knot.

She doesn’t ask again.

 

# # # #

 

For her birthday, Sharon treats her mother to home baked goods and cartoons before bedtime.

“It’s my birthday,” Sharon tells her, “I get to choose.”

So they stay up late watching movies that Rose has seen so many times she could probably recite them, and Sharon falls asleep on the sofa, drooling into a cushion. Rose could probably still carry Sharon up the stairs, but she wakes her, nudges her in the direction of the bathroom with a, “brush your teeth,” and a promise of a story before bed.

She doubts Sharon will last through it, but it’s her birthday, and Rose will treat her to the world if she asks for it, before she has to leave for her father’s house come weekend.

The last thing Rose expects as she’s cleaning up the living area is a knock at the door. It makes her stop, wonder. There’s a doorbell out front, in perfect view of any visitors, and yet the knock had come timid and light. It’s as if whoever is on the other side doesn’t want an answer.

Rose finds the baseball bat before she answers it.

She stops behind the door, contemplates calling out to her visitor, but Sharon is upstairs and she doesn’t want to panic her. She can hear a tap running in the bathroom and figures she probably won’t hear anyway.

Holding her breath, Rose unlocks the door.

Who she finds on the other side of it almost has her dropping her baseball bat again – _does_ have her gasping out, “You’re alive,” like Chris had. Her heart feels double its size, a pain in her chest that she struggles to breathe around.

“Yeah,” Cybil looks pleased to see her, but antsy; her smile is fake or forced and Rose isn’t sure she likes the look of it, “it’s good to see you, too.”


	2. Chapter 2

It takes Rose a moment to realise that she’s real.

She’s in full uniform, water dripping off her helmet and onto her cheeks. If not for the absence of a cut to her temple, of that brilliant determination in her eyes, Rose could almost allow herself to be led back there, again, where Silent Hill lies ahead of them like a crouching panther.

“Cybil.” She takes her in, the jacket pulled tight around her, but unzipped, the _too tight_ leather trousers that Rose, no longer in fear of Sharon’s life, can appreciate now – just a little. “What are you doing here?”

_How did you survive?_ she’d meant to ask, and Cybil just smiles a little more truthfully and shakes her head.

“It’s storming like a bitch, Rose. Can I come inside?”

Rose invites her in with the storm. She hadn’t realised that it was raining, but now that she has it’s all she can hear. It is deafening. Cybil follows her through to the living area, dripping on the wooden floor. Her boots trail gravel and dirt, and she stops short of the rug even as Rose crosses it to get to the stairs.

“There’s coffee in the pot,” she tells her. “I don’t take sugar.”

It’s all the invitation Cybil needs to remove her helmet and her boots. She tucks them away with her jacket in the hall, where they can drip and drip and Cybil can get warm in the kitchen, where she attempts to find where Rose keeps her mugs.

Once she hears the coffee machine spur into life, Rose takes her bat and ascends the staircase. Sharon is in the bathroom doorway when she reaches the landing, and pulls the toothbrush out of her mouth when she sees the weapon in her mother’s hand.

“Who’s here?” she asks. “Is it daddy?”

“No, honey.” Rose brushes her fingers through long, dark hair, then guides Sharon back into the bathroom. “Just a friend. Finish up here and get into bed, okay?”

“What about my story?”

She’s pouting hard – indignant.

“You’ll get it,” Rose promises, even manages a small smirk. “I’ll pick one out, shall I?”

Sharon agrees with a shrug, and Rose hesitates on the landing once more, eyeing the empty staircase, before entering her daughter’s room. She keeps the door open, takes a book at random, and sits on the edge of the bed – waiting, listening.

There’s no sign of movement until Sharon returns, teeth brushed, toothpaste stuck to the corner of her mouth.

“Your _friend’s_ being very quiet,” she comments, eyeing her mother suspiciously as she slips into bed. “Who is it?”

Rose tucks the covers up to Sharon’s shoulders and contemplates telling her the truth, but for all that she knows, a little piece of Silent Hill has followed her where it should not be able to go. She wants to believe Cybil is herself – had come out of that town ahead of them – but for Sharon’s sake she won’t get either of their hopes up.

“No one you need to worry about,” she tells her.

“Then why are you still holding that bat?”

Rose eyes it guiltily, then offers, off-hand, “Force of habit.”

Sharon rolls her eyes.

“Just read, momma,” she sighs, curling into Rose’s hip. “I’m tired.”

And so Rose opens the book to page 1 and puts her worries aside for twenty minutes.

 

When she returns downstairs, Cybil has made herself a seat at the kitchen table. She’s staring down into a mug, but stands when she notices Rose’s return. She comes towards her, just a step, and Rose has to force herself to place the bat down against the counters.

She has to force herself not to embrace Cybil like Chris had her.

“That was – I was just putting Sharon to bed,” she tells her, and Cybil nods her understanding, even smiles again.

“How is she? I’ve been thinking about you – both of you.”

“She’s good.” _Now_ , she wants to add. They’re both okay _now_. Rose comes around the table, to the seat where Cybil has placed the coffee that she supposes is her own. She sits, and Cybil follows suit. “How—”

_Have you been?_

_How are you?_

_How are you **here**?_

Cybil shifts uncomfortably, expecting all three.

Finally, Rose settles on, “I’ve been thinking about you, too.”

There’s silence, again, but neither can bear it.

It prompts Rose into whispering, as though the words carry less weight this way, “I didn’t think you got out.” There are tears in her eyes, suddenly, and a smile in place of a grimace. “I thought you – Sharon watched you – she saw you dead.”

Cybil nods her head.

“I remember that.”

“And?”

A slow sigh.

“Nothing else.”

Rose nods her head. She doesn’t understand why, but she’s glad. Deep down, she knows she doesn’t want to hear of what Cybil might have seen – of where she might have been. Cybil can keep her secrets, Rose doesn’t want them.

“How did you find me?” she asks – safer ground – and tucks her hands around the mug, bringing it closer to her stomach.

“I’ve had your address for a while.” Cybil says the words like she’s assessing Rose’s reaction – slowly, carefully. “Police records.”

“I never heard from you before now – no one mentioned you, you weren’t—”

“I asked them not to.”

“Oh.”

“I couldn’t – I had to take some time out, just to – just to make sense of it all. I didn’t want to see you.” She says it too honestly, then realises her mistake, cringes with a smirk. “Sorry.”

Rose dismisses it with a shake of her head.

“That’s alright. I get that. Sometimes it’s…  Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine that it was ever real.”

Cybil looks at her like she doesn’t have that problem.

“Where have you been?” Rose asks, and watches as Cybil lifts her coffee to her lips. She tips her head right back, finishes the last of it, and Rose watches her throat as it shifts with her swallow. Cybil hasn’t changed. She’s still bleached hair and leather – that smell of faded nicotine.

“Around. Out of town, but – close.” She places the mug back down again and wipes her lips, unaware that Rose is watching every movement like it holds some clue as to whether Cybil is herself or not. “I’m back, now.”

“For how long?”

Cybil shrugs uneasily. “Have you… been back since?”

“To Silent Hill?”

Cybil cringes at the name, and Rose almost apologises, but stops herself in time. There’s a set to Cybil’s shoulders that tells her she doesn’t want to fear it – doesn’t want the discomfort or the unnecessary pity. So Rose ignores it, too.

Answers herself, instead, “No. I’ve tried. I always get so far and then…”

“Turn back around,” Cybil finishes, and sighs. “I thought maybe it would help. Closure, or something.”

Rose slides her hands beneath her thighs to keep from reaching out to her.

“You don’t need to return for that,” she tells her – almost promises it, but even if she’d meant to, Cybil ignores that. “I’ve—” she itches to move, to say something, and Cybil nods a little – prompts her. “Have you spoken to anyone about…?”

A dart of pink tongue comes out to Cybil’s lower lip – Rose notices it even though she hadn’t meant to.

“You mean – _someone_ someone, or a therapist?”

Rose shrugs lightly.

“Both. Either?”

Cybil shakes her head, smirks in that way that isn’t quite a smirk – that uncomfortable, antsy look that she’d had at the door.

“No. There was a therapist for a while. I – I said they were dreams. Nightmares. She started talking about my childhood, and,” she shakes her head and seems to finish like that, loses Rose’s gaze and then returns. “No,” she says simply. “Have you?”

“Sharon and I used to talk about it. She – we saw a therapist for a while, but I was scared they’d try to take her off me if I told them the truth. She’s okay now, I think.” She nods her head. Cybil thinks she’s trying to convince herself. “We’re both okay.”

Like that’s all that matters.

And maybe it is.

“Right,” Cybil says – announces – and shifts in her seat. She clears her throat and looks around her, looks at the clock on the stove, and licks her lips again. “Well, I should leave. It’s getting late.”

Rose isn’t sure what prompts her into standing with Cybil, and again it’s a struggle to keep her hands to herself. She tells herself it’s because Cybil _knows_ , Cybil _has been there_ and Cybil can _understand_. Really, she hasn’t had anyone but her now eleven year old daughter to talk about Silent Hill with, and keeping silent about it to Chris had almost killed her.

She threads her hands together in front of her.

“Do you have to go so soon?”

She doesn’t mean to sound so desperate, but Cybil smiles anyway – nods her head.

“It’s best this way. I’ll – I can see you again?”

“Yes,” said so quickly that Rose almost blushes, “you can. I’d like that.”

“Me too.”

“Okay.”

Cybil sighs and smiles a little – not quite a grin, but stronger than she has all night.

“Goodnight, Rose.”

“Okay,” Rose repeats dumbly, and follows Cybil through to the hall as she begins pulling on her outdoor wear. “When will I – how will we arrange anything?”

What she means to say is that she doesn’t have Cybil’s phone number.

“I’ll call by again?” Cybil offers, and Rose nods her head.

“At the weekend. Sharon won’t be here, then, and we can talk for longer. Properly.”

Cybil’s eyes narrow slightly at that. She looks about ready to ask where Sharon will be, then looks around the house and decides that it’s none of her business.

“I’ll be by,” she says, and pulls on her helmet.

“I’ll be here,” Rose agrees, and walks her to the door.

 

Rose climbs into bed once she’s gone. The house is quiet, and Rose’s thoughts are too loud, so she turns on the television in her bedroom and falls asleep to a repeat of a late night talk show.

That night, she dreams of Cybil and wakes with the stench of burning hair at the back of her throat.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Cybil’s there on Saturday night, just as Rose is expecting her.

It’s late, and the weather hasn’t much improved all week. There’s static in the air, and every now and then she’ll hear a roll of thunder. Cybil doesn’t come in uniform this time. Her outfit is similar to what Rose is used to – tight, dark, shirt tucked in at the waist – but there’s something more casual about her tonight.

Rose ushers her inside and pours her a glass of wine.

“Sharon’s at her father’s,” she tells her as she hands over the drink.

They’re in the kitchen again, but Cybil follows Rose’s lead as she goes to sit on a living room sofa.

“Does she know that I…?”

“No. I didn’t think I should tell her yet. I didn’t–” _know if you were real_ , she doesn’t finish.

Cybil finishes it for herself, taking whatever conclusion from the absence, and just nods her head. She takes a sip of the wine, then places the glass down on the coffee table, her hands on her knees. Bracing herself.

“You wanted to talk about…?”

“Yes.”

Cybil cringes slightly, but Rose pushes on. She needs this.

“Cybil,” she scoots closer to her on the sofa, as though that will make things easier, “what we went through…”

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Please.”

Cybil’s hands are in her lap, finger and thumb of one picking at the skin around the knuckles of the other. Rose covers them both with her hand – squeezes.

“I need to talk about this. I need someone to tell me that I’m not going crazy – or that I am, that none of that could have happened and my little girl didn’t see – what she saw. What I think we saw.”

Cybil turns to her. Her eyes are dark and void, for a moment, of anything that Rose wants to see.

Then she whispers, “It was real. What happened – happened. We faced hell – we went through shit – and then we got out. And now we have to live with this for the rest of our lives. I keep waiting for it to start again, Rose. I keep waiting for something to drag me back.”

Rose’s grip tightens.

“That won’t happen.”

Cybil smiles like she means to say, _you can’t promise that_. She looks resigned. Rose feels it like a sickness in her throat.

“Don’t – don’t do that,” she shakes her head. “It’s over, now, and you can – you can move on from this. It’s been two years.”

Cybil pulls her hands away like she’s been burned – cringes away from it, a sour look on her face. She angles her body away, and Rose has to wait in silence before she speaks again.

“I shouldn’t have come back here. I don’t know what I was expecting from you; you don’t know me, why did I…” She trails off with a sigh and forces herself to look at Rose again. “I’m sorry – this was a mistake. I just wanted to check that you and Sharon were – I shouldn’t have come back.”

Rose hurries to put her wine glass down, to free her hands. They tense over her thighs, prepared to leap, to grasp, Cybil thinks, if she tries to walk away. It makes her shoulders tense, forms a knot there, and Rose sighs and forces her hands to relax again in her lap.

“Don’t leave.”

“It’s doing no good, me being here.”

“It’s doing _me_ good.” Rose shakes her head. “No, I don’t know you, maybe not, but you went through _hell_ to help me – to save my daughter – when you had nothing to gain.” Cybil’s face scrunches up like she wants to interject, but Rose doesn’t let her. She continues, “I might not know you well, but I _know you_ , and I think this is helping you, too. I think you need this like I need it. Otherwise, why did you return?”

Cybil’s jaw tenses, but she has no answer.

“After you’d – when it was just me and Sharon, I asked it for a favour. Everyone was gone and I asked it for a favour, and I didn’t think it would answer. It didn’t answer. I thought it was hopeless, but…”

Cybil’s frowning, now, not comprehending. She wants to ask who ‘it’ is, and then realises. The demon that had taken on Alessa’s form – Sharon’s form. That’s when Rose’s words register, and her entire body turns tense.

“You asked for what?” she demands, and Rose turns meek suddenly, like she’s said something she shouldn’t have. “ _Rose_. You asked for _what_?”

“You were gone – you were, and it was my fault, I brought you here – I had to—”

Cybil is shaking her head.

“No,” she says, like she can force the choice back on Rose, like she can rewrite their last day in Silent Hill, “no, you had no _right_.”

“I’m sorry—”

“You asked for me – when you could have gone, when you should have left, you asked for me?”

“ _Yes_.” She says it like she can’t comprehend another answer. “Yes, I asked for you. You were dead. You died protecting my daughter, what was I supposed to do?”

“Leave! You were supposed to leave, Rose, didn’t it tell you as much?”

“Yeah, and I told it to bring you back. I told it that you didn’t deserve to go wherever they went – you deserved better than that.”

They’re almost shouting now – raising their voices – and Cybil just about contains her outburst with a sharp breath in. She leans into Rose’s face, and Rose cringes back.

“You should have left,” she tells her slowly, with false calm. The look on her face makes Rose’s spine shudder. “You should have let it keep me.”

Before Rose can stop her, Cybil is standing. She punches her hands around the small pile of outdoor wear she’s left by the door – her bike helmet and jacket – and tries to make it away, but Rose meets her on the step.

“Wait!” she calls after her, and jogs up the drive until she can place a hand on Cybil’s elbow, momentarily halting her progress. “Wait, please, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do, I couldn’t – I couldn’t just leave without you.”

“You thought you had,” Cybil reasons.

“Yeah, and it almost killed me. I lured you out there, your death was on my—”

“You had no idea what we were facing. You couldn’t have.”

“No, but I knew what I was doing. I should have made you leave. I shouldn’t have,” she bounces on her heels, expression pained, “I shouldn’t have let them take you.”

“You didn’t have a choice in that,” Cybil reminds her, and Rose shakes her head as though that doesn’t matter. “Look, maybe it wasn’t anything to do with me, but I put myself in danger. I was doing my job – and don’t act like you wanted me there to start with.”

Finally, a quiver to her lips.

“No,” Rose agrees. “Maybe not.”

“Okay then.” Cybil nods like that settles it, but Rose takes her hand in hers, threads their fingers together. Cybil frowns carefully, then looks down at their joined hands.

“Come back inside?” Rose asks her. “I still have – I’d still like to speak to you. If you want that.”

Cybil sighs and looks down at the helmet and jacket that she’s holding to her chest, out to the bike that’s parked just in-view of where they’re standing. She turns back to Rose with an uncertain expression.

“Please. I have a bottle of wine to get through, and it’s open now, I will get through it. For the sake of my hangover in the morning, stay.”

She doesn’t care about the hangover, or how regularly Rose finds herself drinking an entire bottle of wine to herself. Rose’s hand is warm in hers, and it’s been so long since she’s felt that kind of affection given so freely. Even if she hasn’t any right to, she takes it.

“One drink,” she tells Rose. “I’m driving.”

Smiling, Rose leads her by the hand back inside.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The helmet and jacket end up at the end of Rose’s couch, Cybil sitting beside them, feet rooted a foot apart and her elbows on her knees. She’s the picture of resignation, and from this position she can study the frayed ends of Rose’s rug, and the slipper-clad feet of her companion. She almost smirks at that, at least.

“I am sorry,” Rose tells her, and Cybil gets the impression that she’s used to apologising more than once.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You’d have done the same,” Rose says, and Cybil sends her a wry smile. She can’t dispute that.

Still, she teases, “Maybe not.”

“No,” Rose huffs. “You were a cop on a mission. You weren’t leaving that town without us.” She sobers at the reminder, then repeats, quieter, “You would’ve done the same.”

“Probably. If I’d have thought of it.”

“You’re surprised that I did?”

Cybil’s shoulders shift, a slight shrug. “We didn’t get off to the best start,” she says, and Rose nods in agreement. “In fact, I seem to recall the words ‘ _fuck you_ ’ and ‘ _stupid cop_ ’ being used.”

Her lips are wavering, though, fighting a smile, and Rose can’t help her quiet laugh. She presses a hand to her mouth, then shakes her head, making herself more comfortable on the sofa. She seems embarrassed for a moment, and Cybil leans back with a small smirk.

“Yeah… I was scared.”

“Me too.”

“I know.”

Rose angles her body towards Cybil’s, one arm over the back of the sofa, hand fisted against her temple. She studies the other woman, the leather trousers that fit a little _too_ snugly around her thighs, and the shirt that’s almost grey from so many washes. Her hair is slightly shorter, maybe, or else freshly dyed, and her eyes don’t look as tired as they had that first night she’d shown up, uninvited, on Rose’s doorstep.

Insecurity lingers in wrinkles by the corners of Cybil’s eyes; she isn’t used to this kind of unapologetic appraisal. She almost shakes her head, almost frowns, but eventually just asks, “What?”

“Nothing,” Rose smirks, but shifts closer.

Cybil senses where this is going, but it’s confusion more than anything that has her sitting back against the sofa cushions. Rose looks desperate to ask her something, and so she holds the silence – takes a sip from her wine, then returns the glass to the coffee table – until she speaks.

“I looked for you when we were leaving. I… I saw your bike was gone – did you…?”

“I had it,” Cybil nods. A look crosses her face – something painful, quickly repressed – and Rose almost regrets asking. “When I woke up, I was out on the road. I didn’t know where I was, at first, and then I saw my bike. The road was complete again; I figured you’d already gone, or that… where I was going…”

“Wasn’t back into the real world?”

Cybil cringes again, but nods her head.

“Yeah,” Rose sighs. “I wondered where we were going, what we were leaving behind. If it had really stopped for good.”

“You think it has.”

It’s not a question, but Rose answers anyway, nods her head and, “Yes, I do. We didn’t – neither of us found it easy, at first. Not for a long time.”

She thinks of the nightmares, the figment of figures that would haunt her peripheral, but turn out to be a chair or a shadow or, worse, nothing at all, whenever she looked directly at them. Seeing Cybil’s face, now, she can believe that the other woman had faced the same. 

“It got easier for us. Chris was… he tried to be supportive, but he didn’t want to hear about it. I couldn’t tell him everything, and I don’t know if he believed what I did say. Something about the – the coal fires and the poisonous air. Probably thinks we hallucinated the entire thing.”

“We didn’t,” Cybil cuts in, so sure of herself. Her voice is hard, brittle, and Rose nods like she means to calm her down.

“No, it happened. I know.” She shifts closer, still, finding the white of a scar by Cybil’s temple, and asks, “Where did you go?”

“Once I’d got out? I just kept driving. It was foggy that night and I almost crashed. I came off my bike, actually, and woke up in hospital.” She shrugs like it’s nothing, but Rose is frowning beside her, itching to reach out again. “When I woke up again I thought… It was so bright, you know? And there was no one, until a nurse came, and I discharged myself. There were… a few injuries.”

Rose gets the impression that she’s brushing over that part, but doesn’t question her.

“After they’d healed, I went back to the station, tried to carry on as normal, but it wasn’t working here. I had to get away for a while, out of Brahams.”

“But you were working?”

“Not at first,” Cybil tells her. “But I needed it, I guess. Needed to feel some kind of… purpose?”

She sighs at that, smirking at herself, and rubs her hand first over her face and then through her hair – it’s already in that dishevelled, just-rolled-out-of-bed state that Rose remembers it in, but now odd ends stick up at random angles. Rose has the sudden urge to brush them back down again with her fingers.

“Sorry,” Cybil shrugs, but Rose shakes her head with a smile that is both quiet acceptance and understanding.

“Don’t be.”

She moves her hand closer, then, hesitates but ultimately gives in to that urge to _touch_ , to _feel_ for herself that Cybil is really here – really herself. Cybil watches the movement of Rose’s hand, then looks to her face for an answer, but her expression is so focused on _something_ that it forces her into silence.

Cool fingers find her cheek, first, then up to her temple.

“When I saw you,” Rose whispers, frowning, “you were… you were so…”

She swallows difficultly and shakes her head.

“This mark here, this was from that first day?” Rose asks, looking from the tiny scar on her temple to her eyes.

Cybil nods her head, just the once, afraid of chasing Rose’s fingers away. She feels a smooth press of thumb against the scar, an almost caress, and her stomach tightens. Rose’s hair has grown out, she thinks, just slightly. Blonde ends tickle her neck – so pale and fragile looking – and Cybil almost considers brushing them away.

Just as she thinks it, the cool press of Rose’s fingers slip down to her jawline, trace across to her chin, and then her thumb finds her lips. Cybil gasps against it. She’s had partners since Silent Hill, and yet no one has touched her this intimately in years. Her lips part, and Rose’s thumb brushes between them.

Cybil can’t help the kiss. She closes her eyes and focuses solely on the press of a blunt thumb nail against her top lip. And then the pressure of Rose’s thumb is leaving her, and something soft and warm is against her mouth.

She has to open her eyes again, just briefly, to confirm that it’s Rose – that her lips are here, on hers, and one hand is snaking up the back of Cybil’s neck, pulling her in closer still. She closes her eyes again, pushes out every thought that maybe this isn’t the best idea, and surges forward.

Cybil parts her lips for Rose, and moans against the tongue that enters her mouth. It tastes like she’s living again.

They share red wine kisses and quiet sighs, and it’s gentle – it’s easy – until Rose’s kisses turn desperate, surging, and then Cybil almost forgets to breathe. Soon, Rose is shifting, moving closer, practically in her lap. She lands there heavily, and then Cybil _really_ forgets to breathe.

Her hands go to Rose’s hips as she rocks into her. This would be the moment she’d be able to feel her partner’s arousal, Rose thinks, but from Cybil there’s nothing. She’s never been with a woman before, and it’s disconcerting, until she moans into Cybil’s mouth and the other woman answers her with a quiet sigh.

Hands snake up to Rose’s ribs, thumbs pressing and plying, and then pushing her away. She goes freely, her body slumping with a sigh that’s both accusation and disappointment, and Cybil sinks into the back of the sofa with deep, panting breaths.

“This isn’t a good idea,” she tries, her voice quiet and strained (Rose is still straddling her hips, still _pressing_ and _shifting_ and Cybil thinks it’s going to drive her mad if she doesn’t move).

“Why not?”

Rose’s hands settle on her shoulders. Her short, blonde hair is sticking on end, already disrupted from the helmet Cybil wears (and Rose has a sneaking suspicion that she does little more than wash it in the mornings). She’s reluctant to stop, but Cybil has _a look_ on her face.

“It’s okay,” Rose tells her, moves one hand to her cheek, “it’s going to be okay.”

That’s what does it. The memory comes suddenly, no warning, and before Rose can realise that Cybil’s no longer there with her, the other woman is shifting beneath her, pushing her back on the sofa and standing. For the second time that night, Cybil takes up her jacket and her bike helmet and prepares to leave without another word.

It’s Rose’s, “ _Cybil_ ,” that stops her, and she turns back with a desperate expression.

“Don’t,” shaking her head, “I can’t – I don’t want that.”

Rose detects the lie instantly, but says nothing to dispute it.

“Okay,” she nods, and slowly, carefully, stands from the sofa. “I’m sorry. We can – we don’t have to talk about that,” she offers, and Cybil gratefully nods her head. Collecting herself, Rose swallows the taste of Cybil from her lips and tries to forget the feeling of the other woman’s tongue in her mouth.

“I should go – really, this time.”

“You can stay.” Even as Rose says it, she knows Cybil won’t. “I don’t mind.”

And Cybil is tempted, she is. She knows exactly what will happen if she does, though, and that’s enough to shock her into shaking her head.

“I can’t.” She pulls the jacket on awkwardly, still cradling the helmet beneath one arm. “You don’t have to see me out. Goodnight, Rose.”

“Goodnight—”

The door closes quietly behind Cybil Bennett, and Rose presses her fingers into her eyes and wonders if she’s ruined something – wonders if she’ll ever see the police officer again. 


	5. Chapter 5

Rose is loath to admit that she misses her, but she does.

It’s been three weeks, three weekends spent at home, alone, and still no sign of Cybil. She’d thought the other woman would turn up again, meek, perhaps, or sarcastic – with the return of that fire that Rose has come to realise that she misses.

But she doesn’t.

 And if Cybil won’t come to her, Rose decides, she’ll go to Cybil.

 

It’s a bad idea, probably, but Rose is here, now. She parks her car in the gym’s parking lot and quickly locks up. It’s barley 6pm, but Sharon has just been picked up by Chris, and Rose couldn’t get here any sooner. A phone call to the station and a quick inquiry about Cybil had gifted Rose a precious piece of information – Cybil’s weekend schedule. Or, at least, a piece of it.

It’s all Rose has, but it’s enough.

She walks through the doors of the gym and lets a receptionist badger her into paying her way, despite how futilely she attempts to explain that she’s only here to see somebody. $15 later and she’s inside the members’ area, walking down a long corridor that’s made up partially of wide glass windows that give insight into the various rooms.

She finds the one with the boxing equipment and pauses for a moment before pushing her way inside. It’s like entering a world of sweat and noise, and Rose presses her handbag further into her ribs as she makes her way down a makeshift aisle of skippers and practice matches. She’s still in her work clothes, pencil skirt and blouse with a thick pair of tights underneath; she couldn’t feel more out of place here even if she’d tried.

Rose almost gives up hope, until she comes to the body-sized punching bags that are hanging from the ceiling. The image makes her think of something else – someone else, strung up like that, eyes still roaming – but she quickly pushes the thought away. She’s gotten better at doing that over the years.

If Rose had ever doubted Cybil’s fitness, she now no longer does.

The other woman is roughly a few meters away, decked in a pair of shorts and a wife-beater that’s rimmed with sweat. She’s quick, agile, and likely pushing herself a little too far, if the noises coming from the punching bag are anything to go by.

Rose tries not to startle her – waits until Cybil finishes her round and collapses out of her boxing stance with a heavy sigh. She’s dripping with sweat, and turns away to grasp both a towel and her water bottle, which she takes a generous swig from.

She looks weary, Rose thinks, and this isn’t the best idea she’s ever had, but she likes to think that it was necessary. Cybil had made it necessary. _That’s right_ , she thinks, _hold onto that anger_. _Just for now_.

Cybil turns while she’s dabbing the towel against her chest (still heaving from the excursion, Rose notices). She seems to find Rose instantly and without hesitation, but there’s concern in her gaze, for a moment, next frustration, and then just simple confusion.

Rose can deal with that, at least. She steps forward, makes an offering with her meek smile, and considers it a success when Cybil doesn’t bolt.

“How did you know I was here?” is the first thing Cybil asks, though there’s clearly more on her mind.

“I called the station. Your, uh – someone mentioned you were usually at the gym on Friday evenings, and I figured this was the closest gym to the station, and…” She’s rambling, now, and realising that she is. Taking a deep breath, Rose just shrugs her shoulders and lets out, “It was worth a shot.”

“Why?” Cybil’s eyes dart suddenly around the room, and she takes a step closer, until Rose can smell the extent of her workout. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no, I just wanted to see you. I mean,” she waves her hands between them uselessly, “you haven’t been back, after…”

Cybil deflates at that, steps back and drags her bottom lip between her teeth.

“I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve had things to do. _Work_.”

“You’re a god-awful liar,” Rose finally sighs, and the corners of Cybil’s eyes crease sheepishly. “Look, okay, I get that it’s awkward between us.” She casts a look around the room. They might have garnered up a bit of attention at the beginning of their conversation, but Rose is satisfied that they have no audience, now, and continues, “I think that was my fault, and I’m sorry.”

“It was your fault,” Cybil mutters to herself, and Rose sends her _a look_. She shakes her head, a half-apology falling from her lips. “So… you’re stalking me now?”

Rose rolls her eyes, but can’t stop the hints of a blush from creeping up into her cheeks.

“Not really. But – you gave me no choice. How else was I supposed to find you?”

“I’d have come by again.” Rose looks at her like she thinks she’s lying. “I would – when I wasn’t so busy, I’d have…”

“Let’s just agree that it wasn’t your work that kept you from coming.”

Cybil pokes her tongue into her cheek.

“Okay,” she agrees, then seems to catch a smell of herself and takes a step back. “Look, if we’re gonna do this, I want to shower first.”

Rose blinks back at her.

“Do what?”

“This,” with a brief gesture between them. “Us – talking. I thought… that’s what you were here for?”

“It is,” Rose hurries, and then takes a step back as Cybil gathers her things up. “I’ll just wait outside for you?”

“I’ll be fifteen minutes,” Cybil promises.

Rose watches her until she’s gone through the door to the changing room, and almost follows her. If Cybil doesn’t want to see her, she has a feeling that she won’t, and how many exits are there in this building, anyway?

She forces herself to leave the boxing room and take a reluctant left, walking back the way she’d come. There’s a limited magazine selection on the coffee table in the reception area, and Rose takes the home and garden wear one from the bottom and prepares to wait.

 

When Cybil arrives again, it’s in jeans and a hoodie and heavy, black boots. There’s a bag over her shoulder, and her hair is still slightly wet. She’s six minutes late, but Rose doesn’t mention it. They end up in a diner across the parking lot, where Cybil orders something rich in carbs and Rose stews over a cup of tea.

“I thought that might have been a clue, at first,” Rose says, so suddenly that Cybil almost supposes that she’s been so lost in her own thoughts that she’s missed whatever came before it. Rose gestures to the plate in front of her, clarifying, “I was never hungry while I was there. Were you? We were there for days and I didn’t eat anything once, but I was never hungry.”

“Food was the last thing from your mind,” Cybil tells her, swallowing what’s in her mouth. “You also never slept, but I bet you never got tired, either.”

“Adrenaline rush,” Rose agrees. “But weren’t you – I mean, even after Sharon and I got home, we didn’t eat much. I remember snapping at Chris for trying to ply us with food, and then realised we hadn’t eaten all day. I thought it meant… while we were coming out of there, at least, I thought it meant it was because we didn’t _need_ it.”

She falls silent after that, and Cybil makes a show of finishing everything on her plate.

Rose waits for her to say something, and when Cybil doesn’t, simply asks, “Did you want to know what happened?”

“What?”

“After you pushed me into the elevator. The reason why… Silent Hill is like it is?” That same, small shudder comes over Cybil, and Rose quickly tags on, “I think it’ll help to know.”

“How can it help?”

It’s not a no, and so, quietly, Rose begins.

She tells Cybil of the cult and Alessa, the demon that had come to her in her weakest moment, and the torment that they, together, had inflicted on the town. She tells Cybil of how they had been saved, if you can call it that, and how Dahlia likely still remains there in the ash.

“What happened to _it_ ,” Cybil says, with enough emphasis for Rose to understand who she means, “after it took the rest?”

The memory crosses Rose's face - something like confusion or distrust in her eyes. "It was waiting for me," she says, and then looks carefully to Cybil. "We spoke, briefly."

“You asked for me.”

"Yes." Rose nods her head. “And then it left.”

Cybil frowns for a moment, only speaking again to thank the waiter who comes to collect her empty plate.

“Do you – do you remember anything?” Rose presses gently, but it is a press all the same, and Cybil feels it like prodding fingers on a fresh burn. “After you—?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

She takes a deep breath, and Rose closes her mouth, accepting that that’s all she’s going to get.

For a while, they sit like teenagers on a first date – tense, awkward – until Rose finishes swirling around her tea and places the cup down with a resounding _thunk_. It gets Cybil’s attention, if nothing else.

“Would you like to come by some time? For dinner.”

“I’m working next Saturday—” Cybil tries to tell her, shaking her head.

“No, I meant during the week.” It silences Cybil instantly, and Rose presses closer into the table. “I want Sharon to see you. I think she needs that, after…what she saw.”

She trails off, and Cybil lets out a heavy sigh.

“God, that poor kid,” she mutters to herself. “She saw it all?”

“She said they wanted her to watch.”

Cybil forms the shape of an expletive on her lips, then rubs at her eyes. Her skin tingles at the reminder of the fire, the sickness in her stomach boiling. She’d burned – those bastards had burned her alive, and made a nine year old girl watch as they’d fed her body to the flames.

She gathers herself, lowers her hand from her face, and nods. What other choice does she have?

“Okay, yeah. I’ll come by.”

“Thank you.”

Cybil dismisses that – shakes her head. She pulls out a wad of bank notes from her pocket and counts out money for her meal and a tip, while Rose reaches into her handbag and pulls out a pen.

“Wait here,” she tells Cybil when she thinks the other woman is going to leave, and scribbles a number down on a napkin. “Call me, yeah? We’ll arrange a time.”

Cybil eyes the napkin warily. “What day suits you best?”

“Tuesday. After five.”

“I can make that,” she nods, and Rose presses the napkin into her hand anyway.

“Call me,” she says, and Cybil only realises that she’s promised that she will once she’s halfway home, stuck behind a red light.

She feels the bulge of the folded napkin in her pocket, tight where her leg is bent. It’s barely a weight at all, but it’s reassuring, like carrying a pistol in her belt.

It feels like safety and a second chance. 


	6. Chapter 6

That night, she wakes up shaking.

The bedroom is dark and Rose is lying in something wet and cold. For a moment, she thinks she might have lost control of her bladder (an unfortunate symptom, but one both she and Sharon had, in the first few weeks since returning, had to meander their way around).

The sheets don’t stink, though, and Rose’s muscles ache in a way that tells her she’s been moving – thrashing. She puts the wetness down to sweat and slicks back the hair that’s plastered to her face.

 _You’re in your bedroom_ , she tells herself. _Sharon is safe. You are safe._ _You are alive_. A mantra that she’d perfected when she’d needed it, but that was at least a year ago. Rose thought she was over this, but evidently not.

For a moment, all she does is curl up onto her side, facing the door. It’s open. The landing light is off, and she almost thinks about turning it back on, but that would require moving, and moving isn’t an option just yet. She lies, she curls up, she stares directly ahead until she can make sense of the shapes she’s seeing – until she can confirm that there’s no direct threat.

While her body locks into position, her heart hammers within her chest. She feels the tip of adrenaline make itself known, like a comforting hand on her shoulder, telling her that it’s there, if she needs it. It’s there, and if she needs to make a mad dash into Sharon’s bedroom within an inhuman amount of seconds, she can.

But the house is silent, bar the ticking of her alarm clock, and slowly the room begins to brighten. Dawn arrives, and Rose’s body loses its rigid posture. She sits up in bed, disorientated with the lack of sleep, and brings both the duvet and her knees up to her chest.

She’ll remain like that for the next few minutes, and then she’ll start on breakfast, she thinks, and try not to worry over what had brought on her sudden lapse into panic after so many nights of undisturbed sleep.

 

Sharon wakes with an alarm, and meets her mother downstairs moments later. Rose aches a little with her smile and wonders if Sharon will be one of those teenagers who doesn’t mind the early rises. Somehow, she doubts it.

“There’s orange juice on the table,” she tells her over one shoulder, shuffling a pile of scrambled eggs from one end of her frying pan then back to the other. “Have you packed your homework?”

“Yep,” Sharon answers, slipping into a chair and pouring out a glass of juice for herself. “Can we have bacon, too?”

“We can have whatever you want, sweetheart.”

They breakfast, and it’s easier, now that it’s light, for Rose to ignore the sense of impending doom that had followed her back from sleep. She sits beside Sharon and watches her as she finishes her eggs, but Sharon is an intuitive girl, sometimes a little too wise for her years, and she easily picks up on the mood that hovers around her mother like a glowing aura.

“What is it?” she asks eventually, still chewing her eggs. Rose gently reprimands her for that, and Sharon makes a show of swallowing exaggeratedly before she next speaks. _She’s her cheeky eleven year old, still_ , Rose thinks, and allows the thought to soothe over her like a balm. “Are you okay?”

“I am,” she nods, and Sharon watches her a moment longer before deciding that she’s not being lied to.

“You’re quiet.”

“I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

Rose shrugs her shoulders and then figures that she might as well start this now, while she can stomach it.

“We’re having a guest over for dinner tonight,” she says, and watches, intrigued, the way Sharon’s surprise slips into a devious smirk. “I want you to help me tidy up around here before they arrive, please.”

“Okay,” Sharon nods, tapping her fingers against her fork. “Are you going to tell me who it is?”

“Mm,” she actually considers it, for a second, maybe less, “no. No, you’ll see. Eat up.”

Rose stands, taking her plate to the sink, and rinses it quickly before beginning to fill the bowl with hot, soapy water. At the table, Sharon swings her legs back and forth and studies her mother for the right time to ask,

“Is it a date?”

Rose almost chokes on something at that – sputters around like Sharon had just cursed in five different languages. _As if she’d know, either way._

“No.”

But Sharon’s grin is growing, now, having caught the pink hue in her mother’s cheeks.

“Are you _sure_?”

Rose deadpans her.

“I’m _sure_.”

She supposes she’s won, after that, because Sharon drops her attention back onto her plate and shrugs. She’s smiling to herself, and humming the tune to the _K-I-S-S-I-N-G_ rhyme.

Then again, maybe she didn’t win that one at all.

 

# # # #

 

It’s growing dark already, now, and Rose checks the time again – checks the calendar on her phone. Tuesday, 5:17. Cybil should be here in just over ten minutes and Rose isn’t nearly finished with dinner. She’d meant to have it prepared ready for them to eat, just in case this didn’t go well, in case they needed to buffer the silence off the scrapes of their knives and forks.

She doesn’t imagine it will be awkward, but it’s becoming more and more difficult, as the minutes strike by, to imagine what it will be like at all.

In the living room, Sharon works on her homework. Rose watches her a moment, hovers over her shoulder and satisfies herself that Sharon is working on the math homework that she couldn’t help her with, even if Sharon begged her. (Well, maybe then, she corrects, but she doubts she’d be much use.)

Her eyes dart across to the clock on the mantel piece, and it’s then that Sharon huffs a sigh and Rose prepares to tell her that they can use a calculator, just this once.

But it’s not her homework that Sharon is huffing at. She leans away from the coffee table that she’s half curled under and tips her head right back to see her mother.

“Mom, you said they’d be here at half past,” she says, the picture of exasperation. “You’re not going to make time go any quicker by watching the clock.”

Rose has a retort on her tongue the moment it’s said, but she suppresses it. There’s no denying she’s been clock watching, especially to those bright, wide eyes that stare up at her from the floor. Mock-scowling, she brushes her hand through Sharon’s mane of hair and steps away.

“Just finish your homework,” she says, and disappears back into the kitchen.

 

Cybil arrives late, as it is. What’s worse, she brings the cold to the door with her.

Rose huddles her arms against her chest and frowns at her once she’s opened the door. “You’re late,” she says, and Cybil just rocks back and forth on her feet for a moment and then pulls the sunglasses from her face.

 _Sunglasses_ , Rose thinks, _when the sun went down almost an hour ago_.

“I’m sorry,” Cybil says, practicing a casual demeanour as she unclasps her helmet and slips it up and off her head. “Traffic’s been a bitch tonight, alright?”

Rose just shakes her head – takes a good look at her (she’s still in uniform, beneath the leather jacket, and Rose almost regrets asking her to come on a work day). She’s not exactly dressed for dinner, but it’ll have to do. Cybil’s here, is the main thing, and Rose tells her as much as she steps out of the way to allow her entry.

In the hall, Cybil shuffles out of her jacket and boots, tidying her outdoor wear into a pile by the row of fur-lined boots and black work/school shoes. On standing, she’s struck by a sudden bout of nerves. Rose recognises the look on her face and touches her elbow, tells her, “don’t panic,” and together they take a deep breath.

Settled, Cybil nods her head and follows Rose through to the living area.

Having expected the build-up, Sharon sits with her back to the two adults. Whoever their guest is, they’d made them wait – made her momma curse in the kitchen when she thought she couldn’t be heard. It’s not the best, in terms of revenge, but Sharon exercises it until her mother says her name.

She tries to keep it up, tries to look unaffected when she turns around and sees that the strong, dad-like figure she had been expecting is nothing of the sort. Sharon seems to hunch in on herself as though struck, an awful look on her face, and maybe, Rose thinks a little too late, maybe this wasn’t a good idea. She hurries forward, but Sharon is already meeting her half way.

“Mommy?”

“It’s alright,” Rose tells her, hugging her to her side, and Cybil stands, dumbstruck and helpless, just behind them. “It’s okay. This is Officer Bennett. Do you remember her?”

It’s a stupid thing to ask. Sharon almost tells her mother as much, but then the images – the _flames_ , the _screams_ , the _stench_. She nods her head, willing her eyes not to close lest she find an unwanted memory in the backs of her eyelids.

“Rose,” Cybil tries, tries to be gentle, but she just sounds scared. “Rose, I’ll—”

“No.” She spins on her, sending her look that tells her _don’t you dare walk out now_ , and Cybil swallows and nods her head and stays.

When Sharon looks up again, catches the police officer’s gaze, she shudders against her mother’s side and says, “I saw – I saw—”

Rose presses her hand into Sharon’s cheek and lifts her gaze up, away from Cybil and to her. “I know, honey,” she sooths, “I know.”

“But she—”

“I thought so, too.”

Distrust comes quick and aggressive to Sharon’s eyes, but there’s nothing in her mother’s gaze to fight it. She frowns, her bottom lip wobbles, and then she turns on Cybil again. This time, she doesn’t shudder.

“You’re alive,” she says, and Cybil nods, because it comes out scared and tentative and just like a question. “How?”

“I… I don’t know,” Cybil flounders. Her throat is suddenly very tight. “I woke up.”

“That’s impossible,” Sharon whispers. “Mommy, that’s impossible.”

Brushing her daughter’s hair back from her forehead, Rose presses a kiss there and squeezes her shoulder.

“I thought so, too,” she says.

(As though a lot of previously impossible things hadn’t been disproven beyond the borders of Silent Hill.)


	7. Chapter 7

Sharon waits for something to change.

She’s experienced a lot more in her life than most eleven year olds, and she thinks she has a keen grasp on her intuition by now. She can sense it coming – that change; an ending, perhaps – and it has her gripping her knife and fork until her hands shake.

 

Dinner is quiet.

Rose sits and steals glances between her daughter and her—and Cybil, and wonders if she should have put the radio on before they sat down to it. Then again, the way the weather’s been lately, she doesn’t know if she’d be able to stand the infrequent lapse into static should the signal blow out.

She lifts her drink to her mouth and tries to ignore the way Sharon pushes her food around her plate, barely eating. She wonders if Cybil can feel their eyes on her, and then notices the tight set to her shoulders and figures that that answers her question.

“Eat your peas, please,” Rose tells Sharon, and Cybil looks up with a soft sigh.

Recognising the look on her face as Cybil asking for permission to say something, Rose feels blindly around for her instincts and finds the voice that tells her Cybil would never purposefully do anything to upset Sharon. Hesitating only a second, she nods her head.

Permission granted, Cybil turns to Sharon. “I, ah, I know that it was a bit of a shock,” she says, and Sharon slowly slides her eyes up to the officer’s face, “me turning up here tonight.”

Sharon’s head moves imperceptibly; if Cybil wasn’t looking for a reaction, she’d probably have missed it.

“I’m sorry if I frightened you.” The eleven year old turns back to her plate. “I didn’t want to.”

“You didn’t frighten me.”

The adults share a brief look.

“I didn’t?”

Sharon shakes her head again.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” she says, with all the finesse of an eleven year old, and Rose releases a soft sigh-come-chuckle. Said so simply, it almost sounds appropriate, but Rose catches Cybil’s smile and figures that they’re not too far gone yet – figures they still have a chance.

Cybil takes up her drink and says into the glass, “Me too.”

She swirls a mouthful of water around her teeth and attempts to put out the fire in her throat.

 

Afterwards, Sharon makes herself scarce. Rose says that it’s because she doesn’t want to help with the dishes, but Cybil has another thought in mind. Grabbing her plate and glass, she follows Rose to the sink and places her dirty dishes down in the bowl.

“Do you think it might have been a bit much, her seeing me?” she asks, leaning back against a counter as Rose rolls up the sleeves of her jumper and begins filling the bowl with water. She casts Cybil a look, a small frown that prompts the other woman into saying, “Maybe you should have told her I was coming before I showed up.”

It sends an unnecessary shudder of anger down Rose’s spine, but it’s quickly repressed. The conversation sounds too similar to the numerous arguments she’s had with Chris about Sharon’s upbringing – about what was right and wrong for her – but Cybil isn’t Chris, Rose reminds herself. (As though she really has to.)

She turns back to the water and grabs a sponge, saying, “I think she took it well, considering.”

Cybil doesn’t ask _considering what_.

“Besides,” and Rose starts moving the sponge in a circular motion around the plate she’d eaten off, “how much better off was she, thinking that you were—?”

“Fair point,” Cybil nods, and grabs a dish towel to dry what Rose passes over into the drying wrack. “I just – she looked scared, Rose.”

A warm, soapy hand comes around hers, then, and Rose drips suds over her fingers when she squeezes. She wants to tell Cybil that she’s seen Sharon scared, she’s seen her terrified, and that wasn’t it. Then she remembers the look on Sharon’s face as she’d turned around to see the two of them entering the living room, and all she manages is a small sigh and an even smaller smile.

“She’ll be okay,” she says, and slips her hands back into the water to fish out another plate.

Cybil just nods her head, hoping she’s right.

They make short work of the chore like that, standing in silence and passing dishes from hand to hand. Cybil speaks only to ask where something belongs, but for the most part it’s fairly obvious. Rose’s kitchen looks lived in, the heart of her almost obscenely modern home. Spending an evening here, Cybil can understand why she never moved.

Once the last glass has been placed away, Cybil hands the towel to Rose to dry her hands with and scratches at the back of her neck. She glances around the kitchen, then through to the dining-come-living area where they’d eaten; there’s no sight of Sharon, but music can be heard upstairs.

“Are you working tomorrow?” Rose asks, inquires so innocently that it sets Cybil on guard.

“That’s not what you want to ask me,” she tells Rose, and Rose wets her lips and tries to bite back her smirk.

“No, it’s not,” she agrees, folding the dish towel up and tossing it on the counter. She has to build herself up for this, though, and nerves build at the base of Cybil’s spine like pins and needles when she figures something’s off. “I… was going to ask if you wanted to stay for a while.”

She bites her lip when Cybil doesn’t answer straight away.

“Have a drink with me?”

Cybil _is_ working tomorrow, for what it’s worth. She has an early patrol. She shouldn’t, is the conclusion that she comes to, and then she sees the look on Rose’s face and feels her resolve crumbling.

Sighing, she shrugs her shoulders and asks, “What are we doing, Rose?”

Rose moves closer. “We’re not doing anything,” she tells her, then slips her fingers along the back of Cybil’s knuckles. “I’m asking you to stay for a drink.”

“As…?”

Cybil’s voice is tight, lost in her throat, and Rose’s fingers are coming around her own, now, slipping between her own, holding her hands in the palms of hers.

“Does that matter?”

She wants to answer ‘yes’, but Rose looks just as concerned with her answer as the one she’d force her into giving. Cybil would call the look on her face ‘scared’, if she hadn’t faced what she had two years prior. ‘Nervous’ is what she settles for, and her thumbs shift back to brush along the fingers Rose has clasped around hers.

“If I stay,” she says, and lets that sit in the air between them for a while, until Rose is nodding and prompting her on, “we can’t do this.”

“Do what?” Rose asks, but her hands are massaging Cybil’s, now, are sliding up to her wrists and soothing the skin there like she’s rubbing in a cream. Cybil knows what she’s doing and she almost wants to beg her to stop; her resolve is only so strong and she _doesn’t even know_ this woman. She doesn't even know her, and yet her knees feel weak, her stomach giddy.

“ _This_ ,” she eventually groans when Rose works up the courage to kiss her neck. “Your daughter is upstairs.”

“Exactly.”

“ _Rose_.”

Rose takes in a shuddering breath against her throat.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I know.”

She pulls back, then, keeps her head dipped low. She looks small and confused and, without thinking about it, Cybil reaches out to tip her chin up. Rose’s gaze is vague and lost, but there’s a smile on her lips, at least.

“I’ve found it so difficult to be close to people,” Rose whispers. “But not with you.”

“What does that mean?”

But Rose only shakes her head.

“I don’t know.”

She allows herself the contact for a little longer, and then slowly releases Cybil’s wrists. Her hands come away like handcuffs, only Rose can’t see the marks they leave behind. Stepping back, she wets her lips and takes a deep breath in, studying the other woman. Cybil is standing stock still – too still – and Rose worries for a moment that she’s upset her.

At a loss for something to say, Cybil flounders and finally falls back into, “I am working tomorrow, actually.” She rubs the corner of one eye with her finger, then shifts her footing to broaden her stance. “Early start. I shouldn’t be drinking.”

Rose almost tells her that they don’t have to drink, but she already knows that that’s not the real problem here. She dips her head into a nod and clasps her hands together in front of her.

“Okay then. Will you stay in touch?”

Cybil aches with her smile, with the small step she takes backwards, away from Rose. A fraction of her will doesn’t want to turn Rose’s offer down, and it sends her entire body into a languid state of reluctance. She doesn’t want to leave, but something cool is prickling against her back, something like a cold sweat or an echo of a long forgotten memory, and she knows she has to.

“You have my number,” she reminds Rose, and says her goodbyes quietly before leaving.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (A/N: I'm filling in a little backstory here that isn't in the movie, as far as I'm aware. Just a heads up!)

Rose tries to call her.

It feels like cheating – like, somehow, it undermines the struggle they’d had in opening communication in the first place. It’s also 9am, and Rose has just arrived at work, set out her desk and switched on the computer. She only has a few minutes to spare, and she isn’t sure if Cybil is awake or working.

So she settles for a text, instead.

‘ _It’s Rose. Do you have some free time this Saturday?_ ’

After that, she puts her phone away. It wouldn’t do to dwell, and Rose has work – has something that requires her attention for the next five and a half hours. It’s a level of self-control that she knows she won’t be able to exercise for long, but Rose lasts until the end of her work day. She collects Sharon from school and the two of them meander around the kitchen, Sharon looking for a snack and Rose biting off her gloves. Once she has one hand free, Rose plunders her bag for her phone. She turns it on, unlocks it, and tries not to let the disappointment she feels sour her expression when she sees no new message notification.

Her mood depletes the rise of her shoulders, has her sagging into the counter. She sighs out the deterioration of her mood, and Sharon seems to pick the scent of it up in the air. She pulls a milk carton out of the fridge and pivots around to study her mother.

“What’s wrong?”

“Hm?” Rose looks up, but shakes her head with a quick smile. “No, nothing. Put the cap back on that once you’re finished.”

Sharon eyes her a moment longer, as though wanting to say something – wanting to _see_ something. When it becomes clear that Rose is giving nothing away, she turns around again and grabs a glass down from a cupboard.

Rose sits a moment longer – makes tea and stews with it. She puts pasta on later, and they share a late dinner in front of the TV.

 

The text comes through near 10pm.

Sharon is asleep and Rose is lying width-ways across her bed, using one hand as a pillow and attempting to follow the storyline of a TV drama. It’s mundane at best, but usually does the trick in sending her to sleep.

The phone on her night stand lets out a sibilant hiss, jolting Rose out of her position. It’s the text tone that calms her down, and she reaches out with a still-beating heart to check who it is. (It doesn’t lessen its pounding any when she sees it’s from Cybil.)

 ‘ _My place or yours?_ ’

Rose takes that as invitation, barely hesitating as she writes back, ‘ _Yours. Should I bring anything?_ ’

Cybil’s reply comes through fifteen minutes later. Rose imagines her showering, preparing for bed, or else musing over how to reply.

‘ _Just yourself. I finish at 5, do you want to eat?_ ’

‘ _If you don’t mind?_ ’

‘ _I don’t._ _Come by around 6._ ’

Cybil’s text is followed by an address. Rose makes a mental note to write it down somewhere before next Saturday, and places her phone back down on her bedside table. She tries to imagine what dinner with Cybil will be like, on Cybil’s terms. If she'll be more comfortable there. (Rose imagines she'll be more comfortable there.) 

Will she cook barefoot and with music playing?

 

That night, Rose dreams of Cybil burning dinner and the two of them finding other means to occupy themselves instead. She wakes with a defeated smirk, one hand pressed into a pink cheek, and wonders if this is fate’s way of recompensing for the fact that she never fucked a girl in college.

 

# # # #

 

It’s 5:15pm and Rose’s home prickles with her own exuberated anticipation.

She checks the clock again, heart pounding now, and realises that she’s going to be late if she doesn’t set off within the next five minutes. By 5:21pm she is eyelashes and lipstick (and too late she realises that perhaps she’s making too much of an effort – she wipes the lipstick off in the car).

The drive takes too long, traffic tests her patience, and by 6:04pm Rose is driving past the same block of apartments for the second time that night. She pulls over, checks the address again, and then puts the car in park.

The apartment block can only be three storeys high. It’s a product of its town, is the conclusion that Rose comes to: not the most up-to-date building she’s ever seen, and nothing she’d consider for herself. But she isn’t Cybil, and she can imagine the other woman being comfortable here, she thinks, as she tips her head back to spot the highest windows – lights on inside. She imagines Cybil up there and presses her lips together.

A last bout of nerves later, and she rings the buzzer.

Cybil’s voice comes over the intercom, a static, “ _Hello?_ ”

“It’s me,” Rose says into the speaker, and then stands up straight again once a beep signals that the door has been unlocked.

She lets herself in and goes about locating door 3.05.

For all the building is lacking on the outside, it’s well lit and holds the faint scent of some kind of cleaning detergent inside. The walls are painted an off-cream and the lights don’t flicker. By the second set of stairs, Rose takes a left that brings her to Cybil’s door. It’s cracked open, and when Rose knocks someone calls her in from inside.

“Hi, it’s me,” she says upon entering, and closes the door behind her.

Cybil appears from behind a set of counters, grins at Rose and tells her, “Hi, I’m almost done. Do you want something to drink?”

“Please.”

She slips out of her outdoor wear, placing them on the sofa when Cybil tells her to ‘just put those anywhere’. The apartment is open-plan, as well lit as the staircases, and clean. Surprisingly clean. Not that Rose was expecting the place to be a dump.

Her boots echo off the wooden floor as she comes to stand at the back of the counters, watching Cybil cook. It’s hotter, here, with an assortment of pleasant smells coming from whatever Cybil is stirring. Rose settles her elbows on the counter and closes her eyes; she takes a deep breath in and smiles it back out again.

“What are you making?”

She opens her eyes in time to catch Cybil glancing back behind her shoulder at her, a small smile on her lips.

“Something quick,” she promises, and turns back around again. She’s wearing jeans, today, though for what it’s worth they’re probably just as tight as her favourite pair of leathers. “There are beers in the fridge if you want one.”

Rose comes around the counters to grab one.

“Do you want one?”

“Sure.”

She pops the cap off both and slides one along to Cybil, then steps outside of the limited kitchen space. Cybil doesn’t seem to need the room to move about, but Rose is curious; she wants to investigate.

“How long have you lived here?” she asks, stepping further into the living area and to a shelf that has pictures of two small, smiling boys on it.

“A few years,” comes from the kitchen, and Rose nods her head while peering closer at the pictures.

There’s one at the end of the pair of them squashed in front of Cybil on her police bike, helmets too big on their heads and almost cutting off their sight. In the picture, Cybil is watching them, her arms securing them in place. She looks like she’s been captured mid-laugh, and Rose grins and turns back towards the kitchen with, “Who are these?”

Cybil looks over, and her grin comes quick and unexpected.

“My nephews,” she says, setting her wooden spoon down and turning away from the stove. She comes closer, taking her beer with her, and takes a sip as she joins Rose in front of the shelf. “These are old photographs. The taller one there is in middle school already.”

She says it with a hint of horror, and Rose laughs knowingly.

“They grow up quickly.”

“Mm.”

“Have you ever – do you want children of your own?”

Cybil looks at her with a kind of surprise that makes Rose worry if she’s said the wrong thing. But then Cybil is smiling, and slowly shaking her head.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what kind of mother I would be.”

There’s a story there, Rose thinks, but doesn’t ask for it.

“I think you’d make a pretty good one.” Cybil looks at her like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Really, I do. What was that – the boy you told me about?” Perhaps it kills the mood a little, but Rose wants to make her point.

“The boy who was put down a mine shaft?”

“Yes. You know, I read the news reports on that after we got back. You kept him alive for three days. Word is, you're a local hero.”

Cybil shifts the appraisal uncomfortably around her shoulders, and tries, “I was just doing my job.”

“Mm, no,” Rose shakes her head, but she’s smiling, if only faintly. “For what it’s worth, anyway, I think you’d make a brilliant mother.”

Cybil holds her gaze, searching, Rose supposes, for a lie. She nods her head slowly, and in an attempt to brighten the mood, perhaps, quietly tacks on, “It’s worth a lot.”

Her eyes are unexpectedly soft and Rose feels something inside her chest give up and lie down - curl into itself. She feels warm, and like she wants to kiss Cybil, and the second she thinks it her eyes drop to the other woman’s lips. She’s leaning in, she realises, but Cybil is leaning with her.

They’re inches apart and Rose can taste the perfume Cybil is wearing (like nothing she’d have expected).

That’s when the sirens start.


	9. Chapter 9

_That’s when the sirens start_.

 

Within the space of a few seconds, three things become clear to Rose: i. the siren is not a siren; ii. whatever Cybil was stirring has overheated and begun to smoke; iii. Cybil hasn’t yet realised that what she’s hearing is her fire alarm.

Rose’s first attempt at calming her down goes ignored – gets yelled over. Cybil’s eyes are flashing with peeling paint and rusted doors and the _thud, thud, scrape_ of an oncoming attack. Rose is no competition against the fear on her face.

She tries to move, then, explaining wildly, “the pan, it’s the pan, just let me get it before it sets on fire,” but Cybil hears the word _fire_ and cringes in on herself. The hands that had been tight and fierce around Rose’s arms flinch back like she’s been scolded, and Rose has two options, either to leap for Cybil as she reaches for her gun, or to turn the stove off.

It’s smoking enough for Rose to start coughing, now, and she figures that if she doesn’t take the pan off the stove it’ll kill them. (She tries to ignore the voice that says letting Cybil get to her gun might just do the same.)

Covering her mouth and nose with the sleeve of her jumper, Rose runs into the kitchen. She turns the stove off, first, spluttering into her clothed palm, and then opens a window. There’s no sign of any flames yet, but paranoia is deep-set into Rose’s brain; she wets a dishtowel and throws it over their ruined dinner just in case.

The alarm is still screaming on, and there are bangs on the walls from concerned neighbours. Rose ignores them. She grabs a dishtowel and starts wafting the smoke away from the fire alarm. When that doesn’t shut it off, she gives up and grabs the wok that Cybil keeps on top of her fridge, and smashes the whole thing off the ceiling in one blow.

The alarm comes clean off, shuts up. The only remaining noise is the resonating smash from the bell of the wok and the resulting scattering of batteries and plastic fragments. The apartment is silent, but Rose doesn’t have time to be relieved yet.

She drops the wok on a counter and hurries quickly out of the kitchen. The smoke is clearing with the gust of wind that blows in from the window, but Rose is still panting and coughing by the time she reaches Cybil.

The cop is sitting with her back to a wall – pressed so tightly against it and shaking, trembling; she looks like a cornered animal.

Cybil jumps when Rose reaches out to her, and her hands snap up, gun pointed squarely at her chest. It has Rose jerking back, gasping, and it takes several seconds longer than she’d have hoped for recognition to swim into Cybil’s dilated pupils.

“It’s me,” she whispers, aiding it along, and a small frown creases Cybil’s brow.

“Rose?”

Her voice sounds scratchy and tight – uncertain.

“Yeah,” Rose nods, and tries again to reach out for her. She manages one hand on Cybil’s knee, the other on her forearm, before the other woman finally lowers the gun. “It’s alright, I’m here.”

“What – what –?”

“The fire alarm, honey. It’s okay, it was just the fire alarm.” And, when incomprehension deepens Cybil’s frown: “Dinner was burning – the smoke set it off.”

Cybil takes in a deep, slow breath and looks around her apartment. She looks for a long time, her body shaking beneath Rose’s hold, and finally her gaze drops to the gun in her hands. She doesn’t remember grabbing it. What she does remember, what has her expression quickly falling into something like guilt, is pointing it at Rose.

“I-I’m sorry,” she tries, shaking her head. She looks back down to the gun, again, holding it like she’s forgotten how. “I wasn’t going to – I—”

“It’s okay,” Rose promises, and slips her hand down to Cybil’s. She closes her fingers around the gun and lets out a soft sigh when Cybil lets her take it. “You were scared, is all.”

Cybil’s eyes well with tears at the truth of the statement, but before she can try to apologise again, there’s a bang on the door. Rose reaches it first, leaving Cybil on the floor, and opens it up to a concerned looking neighbour.

“All good here, sorry for the noise,” she says, and sees that others in the apartment block are sticking their heads out into the hallway. Rose can’t blame them, but pushes the door closed to their silence.

When she turns around, she finds Cybil reaching for the gun again. There’s a soft click – what Rose suspects is her turning the safety back on – and then Cybil places it back down beside her. Still within arm’s reach, just in case.

Rose aches for her, but there’s no pity in the hand that she places on Cybil’s knee, lowering herself to the floor so that she, too, can sit with her back against the wall. She keeps her hand there – squeezes once – and Cybil lets her.

For minutes, all they do is sit, but Rose has a feeling that if she allows Cybil to stew in silence, she’ll only fall deeper into her thoughts. She leans her shoulder into the other woman’s and thinks of something to say, but Cybil beats her to it.

“I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.”

Rose releases a short, sighed, “None of it should have happened.”

“True, that.”

Cybil cuts her gaze across to the kitchen, still misty, the remnants of her shattered smoke alarm covering the floor. She feels it so strong in throat, in her nose, that she can barely believe that she never detected the smoke sooner.

She’s going rusty, she thinks. She’s getting lazy.

“How am I supposed to do my job if I can’t handle a single goddamn fire alarm?” she sighs, rubs at her eyes, and Rose squeezes her leg again. “You know, they put me on low risk jobs when I got back. Traffic, college seminars, the kind of stuff that you don’t need to break a sweat doing.” She cuts Rose a look. “Not my typical gig.”

“They didn’t think you were up to it?”

“No,” Cybil shakes her head. “I _wasn’t_ up to it. I tried to be, but every perp I was chasing down became one of those armless—” She stops herself with a shake of her head, cheeks pale. “I thought if I could just get back into the swing of things, everything else would fall into place eventually.”

“And when it didn’t?”

Cybil shrugs her shoulders.

“It just didn’t.”

She casts a look around the apartment, the botched dinner, the smoke fighting towards the window, and Rose gets the impression that this has been her life for the past two years. While Rose has been healing, Cybil has been stuck in a paradigm of Alessa’s recurring nightmares.

“You have to leave it behind,” Rose tells her. “Accept that it’s over.”

“How? How did you manage it, so quickly?”

“I didn’t – not quickly – but I had to. For Sharon. She needed me there for her.”

Cybil nods her head and presses the back of her head against the wall. She looks so hopeless that Rose finds her hand and threads their fingers together.

“It’ll happen for you, too,” she tells her. “If you let it.”

The look of disbelief remains on Cybil’s face for a second longer than Rose can hold her gaze for. It’s unnerving, almost, how much this woman has changed. Then Rose remembers the way the church had reeked of burnt flesh and hair when she’d walked in, how she’d instantly known what had happened, and the guilt of the relief she’d felt when she’d seen that the charred body on the ladder was too large to be Sharon’s.

She remembers blowing the stench of Cybil’s barbecued corpse out of her nose for days after, and the numbness that had resided behind her breasts as she’d tried to come to terms with what had happened. That Cybil has made it this far is a miracle in itself; Rose isn’t expecting her to have her life together on top of that.

“Can I show you something?”

It’s asked so quietly, but in the silence of the apartment Cybil’s question resonates. Rose forces herself out of her thoughts and nods her head.

“Of course.”

The hand in hers curls tighter, squeezes, and then releases. Cybil moves lethargically away from the wall, but neither stands nor meets Rose’s gaze. She pivots around until she’s facing Rose, then kneels and begins sliding the open shirt from her back.

“Cybil…?”

“Just wait,” Cybil tells her, catching her gaze. “Please.”

Settled but uncertain, Rose nods her head, watching as Cybil reaches for the hem of her tank top. Her fingers hesitate there, scratching at the stitching. The debate is clear in her eyes, and Rose only wishes she knew what she was doing, so that she could help her. Something like determination comes over Cybil’s face; her eyes locked on Rose’s, she rips the tank top off over her head.

Rose stares at her face. In her peripheral, Cybil’s bra is white against her skin. Rose doesn’t look at that. She frowns ahead and tries to gauge the look of preparation on Cybil’s face. She’s not going to strip completely?

Cybil closes her eyes, readying herself for something. She’s going to strip completely?

 _Holy shit_.

Rose’s lips pop apart, the air stale in her lungs, but the snap movement that Cybil makes is not her removing her bra, it’s her _turning around_ , turning her back to Rose. There’s something anti-climactic about the move – for all of a few seconds.

Rose isn’t given the time to sag into some kind of relief, for made visible with her turn are three angry red scars, each around an inch thick and running from the bottom of her shoulder blades to the small of Cybil’s back. There's something revoltingly unnatural about the size and number of scratches; Rose can't think of an animal large enough to make the mark, nor why it would have any reason to be loose in Brahams. 

“You see?”

Cybil’s voice is quiet and shaking, and Rose thinks she hears a gasp that might have come from her own trembling mouth.

“Whatever had me – wherever I was, I wasn’t supposed to get out.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'm upping the rating for this chapter, but this is still pretty tame.

For seconds, Rose doesn’t breathe. She brings one hand out to the marks, not touching them, as though to feel the raised welts would be to confirm the impossibility of their existence – their origin. Her hand hovers in the warm air against Cybil’s back, and Cybil’s skin is—her skin is so—

“What did this to you?” Rose whispers.

“I didn’t see.”

She doesn’t sound like she regrets that, and Rose can’t blame her.

“I woke up on the road and they were there. I think I was in pain, but the adrenaline – I got straight on my bike. Didn’t know about any back injury until I woke up in the hospital and doctors were asking me what kind of animal I’d come into contact with.”

Rose’s hovering hand starts shaking, but she can’t lower it. Cybil has presented her with these marks for a reason, and it feels like an injustice not to feel them for herself. Slowly, slowly, her fingers press into Cybil’s back. They’re inches away from the raised scars, and Cybil’s body shivers as they come closer to the one on the right.

“What did the doctors say?”

“They don’t know what did it, just cleaned them up for me.”

Rose’s fingers stop at the edge of the scar on the right. The raised skin is pink and soft-looking, but the scratch itself doesn’t look like it had been treated properly. The scar tissue is bulging away from Cybil’s back, not sutured together.

“You didn’t get stitches,” Rose realises, frowning. “Why?”

“I told you,” Cybil says, tilting her head so that Rose can see one eye, “I discharged myself.” Rose turns back to Cybil’s scars, her fingers so close to them, now, and Cybil’s back so warm. “The doctors were asking questions and I couldn’t answer them. I don’t know what was going through my head, but I had to get out. That was all I could focus on.”

Tentatively, Rose slides a finger over the raised flesh. The skin is soft but compact, the scar tissue sitting like a plate of fleshy armour beneath her finger tip.

“Does it hurt?” Rose whispers, and Cybil shakes her head.

“I can’t feel it.”

Rose looks up in surprise, her finger trailing down the length of the scar, then on to the one in the middle.

“You can’t feel this?”

Cybil shakes her head again, and Rose lays her palm flat against her back, across all three of the scars and the skin in between. She feels the ribcage beneath her hand deflate with a soft sigh.

“You’ve been waiting for whatever made these marks to come back, haven’t you?” she whispers. Cybil doesn’t answer, but then Rose doesn’t think she really needs to. She places a second hand on her, splays her fingers out to encompass as much of Cybil’s back as she can. “It’s been two years, and has there been anything?”

Rose takes her answer in Cybil’s silence, and her hands creep around to her ribs, just beneath the white straps of her bra. Cybil shivers with the movement, but if anything, she leans into the touch. It’s all the encouragement Rose needs to pitch herself forward, and press her lips to the soft skin between Cybil’s shoulder blades.

Cybil gasps at the first kiss, her head dipping further forward. The second kiss, she holds her breath against, and before Rose can press a third against the skin there, Cybil turns and captures it for herself. One hand on Rose’s jaw, she eases the other woman around her and sighs into Rose’s mouth as she deepens the kiss.

It’s the easiest kiss she’s ever given, her body trembling from cold and anticipation. The window is still open and the floor is hard beneath her when Rose pushes her down. Cybil brings her with her, her body a cushion from the floor. The cold of the wood against her back has her flinching forward, pressing her stomach up into Rose’s, and the other woman lets out a soft sigh at that.

“Are—you sure about this?” Rose asks around a kiss, and Cybil uses the distraction to shift her mouth to her neck. “Cybil—?”

“I’m sure.” She nips at her skin until Rose lets out a little gasp. “Are you?”

Disappointment crowds her like an oncoming tide when Rose pushes her back. She hits the floor, again, and takes the cold, staring up at Rose with a small, confused frown. She tries to say her name, but the hand Rose has on her cheek slips across to her mouth, pushing her words back in. She opens her mouth, and Cybil thinks she’s going to tell her _no_.

“Bedroom,” is what comes out, and Cybil takes a second to comprehend. Rose takes Cybil’s hands in hers and links their fingers together – brings one hand up and presses a kiss to the backs of her knuckles. “Take me to bed, Cybil?”

That, Cybil has little struggle in comprehending.

Where Rose is straddling her hips, it’s a feat for Cybil to sit up. Her stomach crunches with the effort, but then they’re face to face, and Rose doesn’t hesitate to pull her into another kiss. She pulls their joined hands back behind her, effectively dragging Cybil closer into her, until the other woman is huffing some kind of laugh against her mouth.

“Easy,” she murmurs, grinning, and Rose releases her hands to push her fingers through short, dyed hair. Cybil sobers with a deep breath, her hands finding Rose’s hips. “Are you sure?” she whispers as Rose tugs on the ends of her hair (and then it’s really a struggle to consider the possibility of Rose saying no).

“Yes.”

Rose tugs on Cybil’s hair, again, just to hear her moan. She grins – files that piece of information away for later – and stands. Without the weight of Rose’s body to anchor her down, Cybil feels herself as good as float up to her feet. Rose takes her hand and drags her the rest of the way, Cybil correcting their course halfway so that it’s the bedroom they enter, the bed that Cybil pulls her down to, Rose in her lap.

Rose’s fingers grasp at her back, the skin there pulls taught, and Cybil’s kisses become desperate. She plies the sweater away from Rose’s hips, cold hands on her stomach, but Rose only leans into them. When Cybil becomes distracted, Rose picks up the slack and removes her own sweater. The move forces them apart, has Rose’s hair dancing on ends for a moment, and Cybil grins and pulls her down to the bed with her.

“Have you ever done this before?” she asks, rolling them over so that she’s between Rose’s legs, their bare stomachs pressing together.

“No,” Rose says, but she unclips Cybil’s bra easily enough, and hisses against the kisses that the other woman trails down her chest. “Have you?”

Cybil doesn’t answer her. She works Rose’s bra free and away from her breasts, and takes one nipple into her mouth – sucks, teases, even scrapes her teeth against. She takes her other nipple between finger and thumb, pinching another breathless moan out of her. Rose takes that as all the answer she needs and cups the back of her head, daring her to move.

Once Rose is mewling – whimpering – Cybil pulls back into a sitting position and smiles down at her. She’s a sight to behold – has the breath hitching in Rose’s throat. She’s been able to appreciate women’s beauty before, been able to envy and covet it, but nothing like this. Cybil makes her want to drag her teeth over every inch of her – leave teeth marks where her skin is soft. She digs her hands into Cybil’s hips, then helps the other woman as she begins peeling back the last of her clothes.

When she is bare before her – and she is bare before her, in more sense than one – Rose lies back on the bed and tries to force the look on Cybil’s face into that special place within her memory that she’ll never forget. Strong fingers slide down her ribcage and then back up again, briefly cupping her breasts, and Cybil leans down to press a kiss to her lips.

Rose tries to deepen the kiss, but Cybil pulls away – moves her mouth down Rose’s jaw, her throat, between her breasts. By the outward curve of Rose’s navel, she whispers, “so beautiful,” and Rose feels it in every nerve ending.

Between her legs, Cybil presses her mouth into Rose’s thigh and asks, “Do you want me to stop?”

Rose parts her legs and digs her elbows into the mattress so that she can better see. Her stomach flutters at the sight - at having Cybil so close, with the anticipation of knowing what she's about to do. She drags her bottom lip between her teeth and slowly shakes her head.

“Don’t you dare.”

 


	11. Chapter 11

In the silence of the bedroom, Rose huddles closer to Cybil’s body and watches as the light from the open curtain depletes with the oncoming dusk. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been lying here, gently caressing patches of bare skin, unspeaking. The door is open and a chill blows in from the kitchen window, but it’s only when Cybil’s stomach voices a complaint that either of them wake from their post-coital stasis.

“You’re hungry,” Rose whispers, tilting her chin up to see Cybil’s face. From this angle, all she can see is one side of her expression. A startling blue eye finds hers, and Cybil’s lips twitch in affirmation. “I’m hungry,” Rose adds, and Cybil’s arm stirs around her, fingers brushing along her back.

“I ruined dinner.”

“I know.”

“We can eat out?”

Rose dips her head – hides her smile against Cybil’s collar bone and disguises the move with a kiss.

“I’d like that.”

“Let’s get dressed.”

Rose agrees with a small nod, but neither makes a move to leave the bed. If anything, Rose moves closer. She slides the leg that she has around Cybil’s further up and curls her foot beneath the knee on Cybil’s other leg, keeping her toes warm.

Cybil turns to face her properly, and in the near-darkness of the bedroom Rose struggles to determine the look on her face.

“Are you okay?” Cybil whispers, and Rose tilts her head in confusion. A hand comes up to brush through her hair, pushes it back behind her ear, and Cybil’s fingers trail down the back of her neck, caressing the skin there. “Are you okay?” she repeats, and Rose nods her head.

“Are you?”

Cybil sucks her teeth and nods.

“About this, though,” she says, drawing her hand back. “Are you okay with this?”

Rose can’t help the soft chuckle that leaves her mouth. She sinks her teeth into her lower lip to attempt to repress it, but that hardly helps. She draws her palm along Cybil’s stomach, appreciating the muscles that twitch beneath her fingertips, and tries to quell the heat that’s rushing to her cheeks.

“Yes,” she says, then adds, “more than.”

Cybil smiles like she’s just woken up – peacefully, with the ease of greeting a day full of opportunity. She slides her arms around Rose’s back, following her spine with her fingers, and leans forward enough to press a kiss to Rose’s mouth.

“Get dressed,” she murmurs, and then pushes herself up.

 

That peaceful, easy feeling follows them from the apartment, and Rose revels in it.

On the back of Cybil’s bike, she loops her arms around the other woman’s middle and tries not to squeeze too hard. Cybil had offered the ride once they’d decided on a place to eat that was in the opposite direction of Rose’s home.

(“Might as well only have one of us burning gas,” she’d shrugged, and Rose had gawked at the helmet that was passed into her hands.)

The bike slows as they hit a red light, and Rose presses her cheek against Cybil’s shoulder. It’s a cold night, and she doesn’t feel like she’s dressed to ride like this, but when Cybil reaches around to squeeze her knee, she can’t help but relax into her.

“You okay?” she hears, Cybil turning her head to speak, and Rose pulls back with quiet ascent.

 

The restaurant they choose is nothing fancy.

Calling it restaurant is probably over-selling it, Rose thinks, as they walk in to the smell of barbecued ribs and beef fat. She sticks close to Cybil’s side as they’re guided towards a table at the back; there’s light banter between Cybil and their server and Rose tries to imagine Cybil coming here often.

It’s dark, a little dreary, and the music system probably hasn’t been updated since the passing millennium, but there’s something to be said for the leather-clad biker sitting at the bar, and the plastic fish nailed to the walls. Rose can picture Cybil here just fine.

“I know,” Cybil says as they slip into a booth, and when Rose looks up, she sees that she’s grinning, “’place is a dump.”

“You come here often?” Rose grins.

“Only when I feel like I need a pick-me-up.”

Rose tilts her head to one side, smiling. “Was I that bad a lay?”

A laugh bursts from Cybil like she’s never seen, but she’s quick to shake her head, to press her knuckles to her mouth as though she can push her outburst back in again.

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that, I just—it wasn’t—” Cybil stops and shrugs, huffs out the last of her laughter, and wets her lips. She takes a deep breath like she needs time to prepare for this, like she has to calm herself down. “ _That_ wasn’t bad. You were— you weren’t bad.”

Rose gives into the fight and feels her cheeks burn as she tips her head forward. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Cybil pokes her tongue into her cheek and smirks across at her, and the awkwardness dispels. She tips herself out of her seat in order to reach the menus, and lays one out for Rose. “Don’t order any fish,” she says, giving Rose a look that’s so concerned that she isn’t sure if Cybil is joking or not.

(Just to be safe, she goes for the pulled pork.)

As far as first dates go, this one seems as similar as any she'd been taken on in High School, only _different_. They've done things backwards, Rose later thinks, sucking the grease from her thumb. She'd taken Cybil to bed and now she's trying to probe carefully into the background that Cybil has only ever allowed her brief insights into. With both hands preoccupied by a burger bun, she asks Cybil about her life, learns of the brother and her nephews' names, and the dog she'd brought home when she was twelve, and then she sits and attempts to sew together each new thread of information into the yarn that is Cybil Bennett.

If it was a literal task, Rose is sure she'd be bandaging up her pricked fingers by now. But Cybil talks - seems happy to, even - and Rose sits in rapt attention, eager to hear.

 

They leave the bar-and-grill, uncomfortably full.

Rose side-eyes the helmet in Cybil’s hands and folds her arms against her chest. It’s biting cold, and only one solitary street light shines on the parking lot. It’s not a night to hang around talking in, but Rose doesn’t feel like leaving yet. She thinks of the apartment, the shattered smoke alarm that Cybil is going to have to rescue, and those three, thick scars that no local wildlife could have made.

She shudders, and, on instinct, looks back at Cybil. As though sensing her thoughts, Cybil sweeps a glance around the parking lot, left and right, and then behind. It’s a practiced movement, and makes something inside of Rose ache. She steps closer, rubs shoulders with Cybil, and says to the look of faint surprise on Cybil’s face,

“It’s cold.”

“Then let’s go back,” Cybil says, passing the helmet between her hands.

Rose sighs out a gust of smoky air and nods, glancing around the parking lot. After a moment, she meets Cybil’s gaze and says, “Tonight has lasted too long. It doesn’t feel like the same evening that I turned up at your place.”

Something flashes across Cybil’s gaze, but doesn’t linger.

“Huh,” she nods, but Rose can see it there, now, her walls are firmly back in place and Rose is stuck on the other side of them, “I’d almost forgotten…”

Rose nods her head. She wants to reach out for Cybil, but the other woman has made herself unreachable. Instead, she goes for the helmet, taking it gingerly from Cybil’s grasp and twisting it the right way.

“Let’s go,” she adds, quietly, and Cybil follows her to the bike.

 

At the end of the night, there is no awkward goodbye. Rose refuses to ruin the evening with one. She hands Cybil her helmet back and kisses her cheek like they’re maybe just friends (lingers there long enough like they’re maybe much more).

“See you soon,” Rose tells her, and when Cybil smiles and waves her off, she actually believes that she will. 


	12. Chapter 12

Days pass, and Rose develops an unhealthy connection to her phone. Cybil doesn’t call, and so Rose texts her. Cybil doesn’t text back, and so Rose calls her. Cybil doesn’t answer, and Rose feels her stomach churn.

She’s done nothing wrong, she tells herself, and she believes it. Which means Cybil is ignoring her for another reason, and, try as she might, Rose can’t come to any other conclusion bar Cybil regretting their date. It’s either that, or something terrible has happened. (Really, Rose isn’t sure which she’d prefer.)

By weekend, she sends Sharon off with a kiss and a backpack full of homework, and promises they’ll do something fun together during the week. Work has been busy, and Rose has been distracted, but Sharon shouldn’t have to suffer because of that. She waits long enough to wave Chris’ car out of view, and then grabs her coat and car keys.

The ride to Cybil’s apartment is quicker this time around. She parks outside and slams her door with enough force to gather the attention of those in her immediate vicinity. Rose ignores them. She supposes there’s enough determination in her walk that, when she gets to the door to the apartment building, the man exiting simply holds it open for her. She thanks him, and slips inside.

Taking the stairs, she wonders what she’s going to say to Cybil. It’s been a day short of a week since she last saw her, and while she gets the impression that Cybil Bennett can be as elusive as she chooses to be, she just doesn’t understand _why_.

They’d had a good evening, all in all. At least, Rose was assuming so…

By the time she gets to the door to Cybil’s apartment, she’s not so sure. She lifts a hand to knock, and then hesitates. Is she putting too much into this? Should she have come here at all? She wonders what Cybil will think of her; if she’s already ignoring her, Rose can’t imagine it will be anything good.

But Rose has something riding on this, even against her better judgement, and she needs to know where she stands. Taking a deep breath in, she knocks three times against Cybil’s door and waits. Seconds later, she hears footsteps on the other side of the door. She imagines Cybil peeping through the spy-hole at her, and meets her gaze.

With the _clunk_ of a sliding bolt, the apartment door opens. Cybil reveals herself in half of her uniform, tank top untucked, her feet bare. Heat bursts out of the apartment in waves, and Rose releases some tightness in her stomach as it hits her face.

“Rose?” Cybil looks around her, but it’s obvious she’s come alone.

“You _do_ remember me,” Rose drawls, and then sighs at herself. “Sorry that—for just turning up here. I didn’t know what else to do, I was worried.”

Cybil stresses her jaw, tonguing at her teeth, and then just nods her head. It’s all she offers in terms of a reply, and Rose’s frustration mounts.

“So, that’s it?” she asks, shaking her head. “You ignore me for a week and expect me not to call?”

“You didn’t have to,” Cybil sighs, but she opens the door a little wider, apparently not wanting to have this conversation in the hall. Rose almost stays put, just to spite her, until Cybil looks at her with something akin to apology in her eyes and tells her, “Come inside.”

Rose doesn’t remove her coat, for all that she suffers with it on; she’s not planning on staying. “I didn’t have to,” she concedes, “but I didn’t know if you were ignoring me or if something had happened to you – I wanted to be sure.”

When she turns around to see Cybil, that look of apology is stronger, now, but Rose hardens herself against it.

“I should’ve called you,” Cybil relents. “I’ve just – I’ve been busy and—”

“Don’t do this again. Don’t blame your not wanting to see me on work.”

Cybil shakes her head, but sighs, “Okay.”

“Well?” Rose asks when she falls silent. Cybil lifts meets her gaze, and there’s something strong in her eyes, something as tumultuous as an oncoming wave. Rose braces herself – waiting for it – but Cybil is apparently doing all she can to keep it in. “Cybil,” she sighs. “Is this it? What? You don’t want to see me anymore?”

“That’s not…” Cybil tries, but doesn’t get much further.

“Cybil, _speak_ _to me_.”

“I can’t—”

“Why not?”

And something inside of Cybil bursts.

“Because,” she starts, and that wave bursts free, “I forgot, Rose. While we were together, for a whole few hours I forgot about all that _shit_ and I could just—I could enjoy myself, I could just— _be_. That doesn’t happen to me. That never happens, but when I’m with you, I—I feel like I have a life to live. I’m not just looking over my shoulder, waiting for the fucking walls to peel. For hours I was a real person, I was on a _date_.”

Rose stares at her once she’s stopped, her chest gently heaving. “Isn’t that a good thing?” she asks, because _this is a good thing_ , she thinks, and she can’t help but retain a grasp on her hope, even as Cybil frowns and shakes her head.

“No. No, Rose. No one does this for me, but _you_ , and I don’t know why. But I can’t rely on that – I can’t anchor my life to another person like that. I can’t make you responsible for my happiness, it’s too much, it’s too – _vulnerable_.”

Rose nods her head silently, biting her lips. Slowly, she steps forward, taking Cybil’s hands in her own.

“It’s _you_ , you make me feel so,” Cybil stops, stumped; the energy seems to leave her, “ _pedestrian_.”

A small smile curves around Rose’s lips – she can’t help it. She shakes her head, fingers squeezing around Cybil’s, and says, “No, I don’t think so. I think that’s on you. _You_ invited me on that date; _you_ took me out for dinner. All I did was turn up. You made those steps on your own.”

Cybil bites down on the corner of her lips like she wants to argue. She looks so hopeless for a second that Rose steps forward, into her, as though Cybil were right – as though her mere presence could push out that awful look of disorientation from Cybil’s expression.

“You’re scared,” Rose says, and hurries on before Cybil can interject, “and that’s fine. It’s okay. I’m nervous, too.” Her lips twitch. “So if you need some time – if you need space – I’d understand. Just _tell me_ what you need, because that – you going silent on me like that—” she shakes her head, “I can’t do anything with.”

Cybil is quiet for a moment, but then nods her head.

“I don’t know what I need,” she whispers, looking down at their joined hands. She brushes her thumbs over Rose’s fingers and adds, “I’ve had two years to contemplate this, you’d have thought that’d be enough.”

“It’s not always that simple.”

“I know.”

“Take some time,” Rose tells her. Cybil looks up at that, surprised and a little cautious, but Rose only smiles and promises, “I’ll be here when you’re ready, if you want.”

“I do,” Cybil nods, and Rose releases her hands.

“Take some time,” she repeats.

And maybe that’s all she needs, Cybil thinks.

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

It’s a cold December Thursday and Cybil is entertaining thoughts of Rose again. She’s also at work, and shouldn’t be so unfocused, and the distraction earns her a few light jabs from her boss. “Eyes on the road, Gucci,” she tells him, and turns her face into the cruiser’s passenger’s side window to hide her smirk.

“You ought to cut her some slack,” Tommy says, and Cybil looks to him, surprised.

“Who?”

“DaSilva,” he grins, and Cybil’s eyes narrow in warning. “Don’t give me that look, I’m just saying.”

“You don’t need to,” she tells him, and doesn’t miss Tommy’s smirk. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, I do not,” Tommy agrees. “But something's got your goat, and you haven’t talked about her once this week. I reckon something’s gone awry there.”

“Oh, you do?” Cybil huffs, but Tommy just nods his head.

“Yeah, I do. And, knowing you, how you are, I’m betting you’re doing that thing again.”

Cybil’s head juts back on her neck, offended. “What thing?”

“That—” he shakes his head, looks briefly at her, and smirks. “That _pushing people out_ thing.”

“Tommy.” She rolls her eyes, but doesn’t argue.

“No, I know, I get it,” he continues. “And this might not be any of my business—”

“It definitely isn’t—”

“But I haven’t seen you so relaxed, so content, what have you, since you came out of that place.” Cybil sobers at the mention of Silent Hill, grows sombre, and Tommy casts her a number of quick, concerned glances. When she fails to pass comment on what he’s saying, he continues, “I’m not saying that’s down to DaSilva, but I know you like her, and I know how difficult it’s been for you lately, and…”

To his right, he’s sure he hears Cybil hiss out an expletive, and wets his lips.

“I’m just saying,” he tries, quieter now, “it looked like you had a good thing going there, and God knows you deserve it.”

He grows quiet then, and Cybil is saved from further prodding by the crackling of the cruiser’s radio. Tommy takes the call, and turns to Cybil before flicking on the sirens. “Are you ready for this?” he asks her.

For the first time in a long time, it’s not just blind frustration that has Cybil nodding back.

“I’m ready.”

 

 

That night, Cybil takes down her first real threat since returning to the Force. She comes away bruised and shaking, but alive. Maybe even a little triumphant. For the first time in two years, she faces the attacker and it doesn’t result in a violent submersion into memories she’d gladly hack out of her own skull.

When she finishes for the night, it’s near 11pm and she doubts Rose is awake, but something brings her to her door anyway. She calls once she’s outside, and almost feels guilty enough to tell Rose to go back to sleep when she answers with a croaky, “h’llo?”

“It’s me.”

“Cybil?” Her voice gains an edge. “What’s wrong?”

“No, nothing. I, uh… I’m sorry. I’m outside.”

“…you’re here?”

Cybil holds her breath. It’s hard to tell if Rose is angry or not, but before Cybil manages an answer, the curtains hiding the upper left window begin twitching. They draw back and Rose appears, phone to her ear. Cybil raises a hand in greeting.

“Park around the side,” Rose says, and disappears from view.

By the time she’s done just that, the front door opens, Rose peeking out from behind it in nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts. Her hair is mussed and partially on-end and her gaze is glassy. She looks at Cybil and her eyes narrow.

“What’s wrong?”

Cybil opens her mouth like she wants to answer, and she tries, she does, but then she’s suddenly faced with the very real reality of her having woken Rose up at 11pm on a weekday simply to tell her – _what?_ All of her nervous energy seems to leave her, suddenly, even the excitement from work. She stares at Rose like she’s lost, and Rose’s frown deepens.

“Cybil?”

“It’s nothing,” quickly, to get that out of the way, “nothing’s happened, I’m sorry, I—I should have waited until morning.” She wonders why she hadn’t – why it hadn’t even occurred to her to wait for a decent hour. She’d had to tell Rose _now_. Cringing, she ducks her head and says, “I wasn’t really thinking.”

It’s a lie, Cybil thinks. She’d been too preoccupied with her thoughts to spare on of them on the acceptability of calling on someone this close to midnight.

Rose hugs her arms tighter around her ribs and sighs. “You’re here now,” she says with a tired shrug, and steps back. “Come in, it’s freezing.”

Cybil steps past her and they go through the old routine. She hangs up her jacket and places her helmet on the floor beside her boots. She has a long-sleeved shirt on and she’s still cold, despite the warmth of the house.

Rose watches her carefully, cautiously. Cybil is standing stock still and it worries her, for a moment, that she might not have come here for the reasons that Rose believes her to have come. She slips her hand into Cybil’s and pulls her further into the house.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asks. “You’re stone cold.”

She turns back to look at Cybil once they’re at the bottom of the stairs, and Cybil shakes her head. Instead of the kitchen, then, she redirects them towards a sofa. Cybil sits at one end of it, and Rose takes the cushion beside her. She squeezes her hand, then releases it.

“What is it?”

Cybil wants to apologise again, but Rose doesn’t look upset. If anything, Cybil thinks, she looks hopeful. She hesitates long enough to lose whatever forward momentum that was pushing her into this conversation, and starts picking at a bandage around her left hand. Rose notices the action and frowns.

“What happened?”

“It’s nothing, it’s – work. They’re putting me on busier cases now.”

Rose watches her carefully. She remembers Cybil telling her that she’d struggled with work, and can easily picture it after what happened with her smoke detector. But Cybil doesn’t look upset about it – she looks _thrilled_ , in that quiet way that Cybil shows her enjoyment.

“That’s good.” She says it like a question, and Cybil nods to confirm it.

“It is. What use is a cop if they can’t protect people?”

If Rose is surprised by Cybil’s subtle undertone of self-deprecation, she doesn’t show it. “You got into some trouble?”

“A little.” Cybil waves her left hand around dismissively, and Rose plucks it out of the air. The bandage is stark white; whatever lies beneath it has long since stopped bleeding. Rose imagines grazed knuckles and bruises beneath the shirt she’s wearing. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Is that why you came here?”

Cybil freezes momentarily, feeling her world tilt slightly off kilter. It’s a subtle shift, and it’s suddenly difficult to breathe, but she manages it. She nods her head, “yeah.” Her fingers twitch in Rose’s, and she watches, as awestruck as a child seeing snow for the first time, as she twines their fingers together. How effortlessly they fit, palm to palm. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Yeah?”

Cybil nods her head. “Ever since I came to see you my world has been a little less chaotic. Seeing you, that – I think that _was_ my closure, finally. Things have felt easier, and _better_. I think I let go of that place, and I wasn’t able to do that before, but that,” she hesitates, frowning faintly, “that wasn’t because of you, not directly. That was me.”

She pulls Rose’s hand into her lap, covers it with both of hers, and Rose feels cold and numb. She tries to pull her hand away, but Cybil holds on tighter.

“Rose,” she says, and she’s smiling but Rose can’t register why. “I’m not saying I’d never have done it without you, but you’ve helped me so much.”

Rose nods her head, not meeting Cybil’s gaze. “And now you’ve done that, you’re telling me you can move on…?”

“No,” she shakes her head. “I’m telling you I’ve had enough time. I’m ready.”

Silence, and Rose finally lifts her head. She sees that sense of triumph in Cybil’s face, still, but there’s something small and quiet and uncertain in her gaze. The fingers around hers squeeze once, twice, and Rose finally registers her words.

“You are?” she asks, and Cybil nods her head. She stares at her a moment longer. “I thought… you were going to say…” and then she stops, and smiles, and Cybil releases a surprised but amused huff when Rose is suddenly on her lap, fingers in her hair, mouth on hers.

Cybil gladly accommodates her. She shifts her hips up and back, sitting more comfortably against the sofa, and that spurs something on in Rose. Straddling her, Rose shifts closer until her knees are pressed against the back of the sofa, and Cybil’s hands go to her thighs. They’re soft and warm beneath her palms, and Cybil’s touch slides up to the ends of the tiny pair of shorts that she’s wearing when Rose deepens the kiss.

She squeezes her thighs, and Rose sighs against her mouth and pulls back, panting. “Come to bed with me.”

Cybil nods her head, and equilibrium returns.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is. Thanks for reading this, and sorry for the likely numerous inconsistencies and mistakes! (I'm so shocked that I finished this, I'm too happy to care about them just yet, but I'll probably come back to this piece to fix it up at some point.) I'd say more here, but my laptop battery is dying and I'm about to crash. Thanks for following this little piece, I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

Rose wakes, warm and peaceful and surprisingly refreshed for the amount of sleep she’s had.

Cybil is there when she opens her eyes, watching her in a way that might make her self-conscious if not for the timid, uncertain look on her face. It’s the first time that she’s slept the night beside the other woman, and woken up to her in the morning, and Rose rolls onto her side to get a better look at her – to see what’s changed.

Cybil is already on her side, one hand curled up near her chest, the other stuffed beneath her pillow. Her gaze looks groggy, her eyelids soft and puffy with sleep, and her hair is the kind of dishevelled that only a shower could cure.

Rose smiles across at her, and Cybil hums tiredly in return.

“Do you want me to go?” she murmurs, and Rose shakes her head.

“Stay for breakfast.”

Cybil considers it. It’s not just breakfast, it’s breakfast with Rose and Sharon. It’s domesticity, already. But Cybil’s spent so long running from things, planting her heels in the ground now seems easy – seems natural.

“Okay,” she agrees. “Can I shower?”

 

 

They breakfast around the dining table, with Sharon craning her neck to see the television screen in the living area, almost missing her mouth with each spoonful of cereal. Rose reminds her to watch what she’s doing, twice, and both times Sharon sends her a look so sharp that it drags them back to a level footing, if just for a few seconds.

But Sharon doesn’t seem outwardly upset by Cybil’s presence. If anything, she seems distant – unsurprised. (But ‘distant’ isn’t ‘annoyed’, at least.) Rose takes that as a good sign, whether she’s any real right to or not.

Cybil has already redressed in her uniform, oblivious to the looks mother and daughter are pinning each other with, and sips on a mug of coffee as she attempts to pat out a wrinkle in her shirt. Perhaps she should have been more careful with where she slung it the night before, she thinks, but then she lifts her head and catches Rose’s gaze (catches Rose’s _smirk_ ) and figures she’ll let herself off this one time.

She smiles back, and shifts her gaze across to Sharon, who wipes distractedly at the orange juice left over on her top lip. She hasn’t changed much, physically, but there’s definitely an air of maturity and intelligence surrounding the eleven year old that wasn’t there two years prior. Cybil picks up on it instantly. She supposes that Sharon knows exactly what is going on between her and her mother, and wonders what she thinks of it.

Cybil turns back to Rose, sees her watching Sharon, also, and doubts that the other woman has accepted that little piece of information herself.

 

Once her coffee mug has been drained, Cybil picks up her plate and announces, “I should be setting off.”

Rose looks up at her as she rises from her seat, surprised, and then cranes around to check the time. “Sharon, you too. Come on, finish up here.” She stands from the table, grabbing her own dirty dishes, and follows Cybil into the kitchen.

“Thanks for breakfast,” Cybil tells her.

Rose dumps her dishes in the sink and turns around. “Anytime,” she says, smiling like she means it, and steps closer. “Have a good day at work.”

“Have a good day, yourself.”

For a moment, they’re all girlish smiles and excitement. Rose steps closer, and Cybil sets her hands on her hips, drawing her in. Cybil’s work shirt wrinkles beneath Rose’s hands as she slides them up to her shoulders, squeezes, and  leans in for a kiss that Cybil is only too happy to reciprocate.

She kisses like it’s second nature, Cybil thinks. Like breathing. She’s reluctant to leave, to set foot outside this bubble she and Rose seem to have created for themselves right there in the kitchen, and Rose must sense it in the way Cybil’s hands tighten around her hips. She pulls back, slips a hand briefly up to cup Cybil’s cheek, and then steps back.

“I have an early finish,” Cybil says, fiddling with the belt around her hips.

Rose steps back, into a beam of light that comes in from the window and lights up her eyes – adds something to them that’s maybe mischief, maybe just anticipation. “Call me?”

Cybil grins and dips her head. “I’ll text you once I’m out.”

 

 

It’s a rush, after that. The school run bleeds into her work run, bleeds into a hectic day that comes to a sudden and anticlimactic end as soon as Rose picks Sharon up from school again – not that she’s complaining. Her day has been so busy that the leisurely walk home feels infinite. Rose looks across at her aging daughter and decides that she doesn’t mind, not a bit.

“Can we go this way?” Sharon asks once they hit a crossroads, pointing down the path that leads through the park.

Rose eyes the path, then Sharon’s large, hopeful eyes, and there’s not much of a decision to make after that.

“Okay,” she says, and adds, when Sharon grins and runs ahead, “be careful!”

Rose trails behind her, unrushed. It’s the coldest the season has been so far, but winter is crisp and clean. When Rose looks up into the overcast sky, she thinks of blank canvases and fresh starts. She meets Sharon inside the park, which is empty but for a few lone dog walkers, too far away for Rose to make out their breeds. It doesn’t surprise her. It’s cold and wet, and Rose has to do some perusing before she concedes that there isn’t a dry bench in the place.

She takes to hovering by the climbing structure that Sharon has scaled, walking alongside her daughter as she swings across monkey bars and runs a little too quickly over the chain-linked wooden bridge. The bridge leads into a roofed section, the climbing frame turning momentarily into a house, and Sharon stops and stoops behind its multi-coloured wooden walls.

“Are you ready to go home?” Rose calls up, hands in her coat pockets. She looks out across the playground; even the dog walkers are leaving.

Sharon’s voice rings out from inside the structure, but she doesn’t make herself visible. “Why?”

Rose smirks despite the cold chapping her lips. “ _Because_.”

“That’s not a real answer,” Sharon tells her, and Rose agrees with a heavy sigh. Every twisting strand of her breath is made visible before her face, and then dissipates into the cold air like a ghost.

“Because I want to go home,” she offers, distracted.

“What’s at home?”

The nature of the question has Rose looking up, confused, to where Sharon peeks her head from the nose-up over a yellow painted wall. Sharon’s eyes narrow in a way that tells her she’s smiling.

“Will Officer Bennett be there?”

“Uh…” For a second, she flounders. “No. Why?”

Sharon giggles and moves away, through the other exit of the makeshift house and along a V-shaped rope bridge. Rose follows her on foot, frowning, her hands balled into fists inside her pockets. Sharon looks back at her, halfway across, and throws out, “I know you like her.”

“I do like her,” Rose huffs, shrugging like it’s no big deal.

“You _like_ like her,” Sharon giggles, picking up into a run until she gets to the second tower-like platform in the climbing frame. She stops by the fire-fighter’s pole, and Rose rounds the corner of the apparatus to meet her.

Rose purses her lips. “Are you okay with that?”

Sharon doesn’t react, at first. She crouches down at the edge of the climbing frame, scooting as far forward as she can. With her legs dangling down, she wraps both hands and her shins around the pole and looks down at her mother. She’s close enough, now, that Rose can reach up and adjust the hat that’s come low enough to threaten her vision.

Sharon waits until she’s pulled her arm back. “Yeah,” she says, and slides down the pole. At the bottom, she pulls her gloves out of her pocket and slips them on. “Can we go home, now?” she asks, and Rose pretends that she’s not smiling the entire walk back.

 

 

Cybil texts, as promised, and Rose calls her after dinner.

Sharon is in her bedroom, sworn to her homework, though Rose has her doubts. But it’s seven thirty and she’s tired, already, and has made herself comfortable on the sofa. Her head is far back enough on its cushioned arm that she can see out of the wall of windows behind it. It’s dark and raining heavily enough for Cybil to pick up on it on the other end of the line.

“Supposed to be storms tonight,” she says, and Rose hears her shift like she’s getting comfortable.

“So I heard.” She rolls over, pressing her knees into the back of the sofa. The rain hits a little harder against the glass wall in return. “How was work?”

“The usual.” Cybil says it with a smile in her voice. “And yours?”

“Mm. The usual.” She couldn’t sound more unenthusiastic, and Cybil doesn’t bother to stifle her laughter. “I, ah… I spoke to Sharon on our walk home.”

This doesn’t surprise Cybil. They’re mother and daughter, after all, she figures that’s a typical occurrence. The fact that Rose raises the topic at all, however, tells her that this is important. Tells her that this involves _her_.

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. You know, we always tried to raise her to be open minded, Chris and I.”

“She’s a bright little girl,” Cybil offers, and Rose hums in agreement. She senses where this is going, though, and asks ahead of time, “How’d she take it?”

“Well…” Rose keeps up easily. “ _Well_. She doesn’t seem phased.”

There’s a small pause on the other end of the line, but when Cybil’s voice returns, Rose can detect the smile in it.

“That’s good.”

Rose laughs at the understatement.

“Yes, it is.”

 

 

Dinner is arranged, again, and this time Rose has little reservations. It’s days before Christmas, and Cybil has plans to drive up to her brother’s to spend the holiday with family. Rose can’t complain; whatever they have here is so new, so fragile, she won’t bruise it by rushing things.

She’s also willing to admit that she is a little upset that she won’t see Cybil on Christmas day, or anytime thereafter until the holidays are over. She hasn’t voiced this to Cybil, but doubts she has to. When she invited her over for dinner, for something _special_ , Cybil had accepted her invitation with understanding.

It’s not quite _goodbye_ , but definitely _I’ll be thinking of you_. It’s enough, in the end, and when Sharon asks if they can pull crackers once they’ve finished eating, Rose indulges her. She imagines this same scene, a year on, and feels her face flush – blames it on the mulled wine.

Cybil catches her eye over her empty plate and grins.

 

Later, Rose insists on tackling the dishes alone. “You’re a _guest_ ,” she tells Cybil, “go sit down.”

She tries to, at least, makes it to the sitting area and then notices Sharon crouched down between the sofa and the glass wall. Cybil pauses, both frowns and smiles, and steps closer.

“I’m building a house,” Sharon tells her without looking up, her voice low and steady – focused. She’s holding the decorated sheet of a cereal box in hand, and carefully slots it into place against another two, creating three walls of what appears to be a miniature living room. She looks up once the structure is steady, and grins at Cybil. “Come look.”

Warmed by this inclusion, Cybil folds herself into a crouch and watches as Sharon adds some glue to the back of a magazine cut-out family picture. She sticks it haphazardly on the back wall of the living room, smoothing the crinkled edges down with her fingers.

“Looks good,” Cybil comments, but the house is barely coming along. There are three more rooms ready to be decorated, and other sheets of cardboard that have yet to be measured out.

Sharon hums in agreement, sorting through a pile of her cut-outs. Without looking up, she tells Cybil, “I knew you’d come back.”

Cybil’s holds her breath. Briefly, she looks to the kitchen, but she can’t see Rose from this position – can’t send her an _is it okay to talk about this with your daughter?_ look. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of her. “You did?”

“Mhm.” Sharon pulls out a cut-out of a floor lamp, holding it up to examine it in the light. “I wished for it.”

Slowly, Cybil releases a breath.

“You wished for me to come back?”

“Not exactly,” Sharon says, bundling her lips up into one corner of her mouth. “I wished for my mom to be happy again.”

Something sharp and thick clogs Cybil’s throat, suddenly. She watches Sharon, but Sharon doesn’t meet her gaze. She tilts her head to one side, still considering the cut-out lamp picture, and then lowers it back to the floor. Cybil isn’t sure what does it, but she feels the need to prompt Sharon into giving her more. She puts it down to simple curiosity, or wanting to _bond_ – what does it matter?

“You made a wish on a star?” she asks, humouring her, but when Sharon meets her gaze there’s something wise and patient in her eyes. She looks like she knows exactly what Cybil is doing, and isn’t entirely impressed.

“When I blew out my birthday candles,” she says, slowly, like she’s giving Cybil time to comprehend. _Who’s humouring whom?_ “I made the wish then—”

“Woah,” Cybil intercept, mock-serious, “you’re not supposed to tell anyone your wishes.”

“I told you,” Sharon rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning, now, at her own cleverness, “it already _came true_.”

 

Sharon says a reluctant goodnight. Cybil can’t help the smile when she asks for a bedtime story, quiet but unabashed. Rose sends her a look, and she nods her head quickly. “Go ahead.”

“I’ll be twenty minutes,” she promises, and Cybil takes a seat on the sofa, prepared to wait.

When Rose reappears, she takes the seat beside Cybil and curls up there, sighing. Cybil pulls her legs into her lap, massaging her calves, and Rose closes her eyes and groans. “Don’t stop,” she begs, relaxing into the back of the sofa, and Cybil smiles and does as she’s asked.

“Sharon asleep?”

“Not just yet.”

“You’re tired.” Cybil’s fingers inch a little higher, past Rose’s knee, to the underside of her thighs. “You should get some sleep.”

Rose opens her eyes, then. She watches Cybil quietly, and then asks, “Are you staying?”

“I don’t have a change of clothes,” Cybil points out, but she’s holding Rose’s gaze like she’s already made up her mind.

“I’ll lend you something to sleep in,” she promises, carefully extracting her legs from out of Cybil’s hold. She shifts beside her, kneeling, and leans closer. “Or, better yet, I won’t…”

Cybil laughs before Rose can kiss her, her nose scrunching up in a way that sets Rose off, too. She flops, landing in Cybil’s lap, and shifts like a preening cat when Cybil’s arms go around her – making herself comfortable there.

“You’ll come to bed?” she asks, nuzzling Cybil’s shoulder, and gets a hand of nimble fingers stroking through her hair in return.

“Mm, okay.”

Rose’s smile is tired, her eyelids barely cooperating when she blinks them open. She catches Cybil off-guard, the other woman’s eyes are closed and there’s a small, peaceful smile on her lips. She looks happy, Rose thinks, and feels her body warm from the stomach-up. She’ll make a move in just a moment, Rose tells herself, and then she’ll take herself to bed.

For now, though, she allows herself a moment to marvel at how well Cybil has fitted herself within her life. As unobtrusive, she thinks, as falling ash.


End file.
